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HISTORY 

ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


A  Survey  of  the  Progress  of  Historical  Writing    from  Its 
Origins  to  the  Present  Day 


BY 

HARRY  ELMER  BARNES,  Ph.D. 

Associate  Professor  of  History,  Clark  College, 
Clark  University,  Worcester,  Mass. 


REPRINTED  FROM  THE  1919  EDITION  OF 
THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  AMERICANA 


77- V  P'-^./^c 


p^/'Y 


Cc^i'O-f-o? 


v\ 


HISCOCK  —  HISTORY,  ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


205 


HISCOCK,  Frank,  American  legislator:  b. 
Pompey,  Onondaga  County,  N.  Y.,  6  Sept.  1834; 
d.  18  June  1914.  In  1855  he  was  admitted  to 
the  bar,  in  1860-63  was  district  attorney  of 
Onondaga  County,  and  in  1867  a  member  of 
the  State  constitutional  convention  of  New 
York.  He  was  a  Republican  representative  in 
Congress  in  1879-^7,  and  obtained  recognition 
as  a  party  leader  and  speaker.  In  1887-93  he 
was  United  States  senator  from  New  York 
and  chairman  of  the  appropriations  committees 
and  then  returned  to  professional  practice. 

HISPANIA,  hTs-pa'm-a.    See  Spain. 

HISSAR,  one  of  the  mailed  catfishes  of 
northern  South  America,  noted  for  its 
monogamous  habits,  and  the  fact  the  eggs,  a 
few  at  a  time,  are  voided  by  the  female  into  a 
pouch  made  by  the  folded  membranes  of  her 
ventral  fins.  Here  they  are  fertilized  by  the 
male,  and  then  are  taken  by  the  faithful  pair  to 
a  secluded  place  and  deposited.  This  opera- 
tion is  repeated  until  about  250  eggs  are  placed 
in  the  nest  which  is  then  guarded.  The  hissar 
and  several  other  species  belong  to  the  genus 
Callichthys. 

HISTOLOGY,  the  science  of  animal  and 
vegetable  tissues.  It  investigates  by  means  of 
the  microscope  the  various  tissues  of  man,  ani- 
mals and  plants  in  their  anatomical  relations 
and  compositions.  Topographical  histology 
considers  the  more  minute  structures  of  the 
organs  and  systems  of  the  body;  normal  his- 
tology deals  with  the  healthy  tissues;  and 
pathological  histology  investigates  the  changes 
they  undergo  in  disease.  Marie  Frangois  Xavier 
Bichat  (1771-1802)  is  generally  credited  with 
the  foundation  of  the  science  of  histology.  Un- 
fotunately  the  imperfect  condition  of  the 
microscope  in  his  time  prevented  Bichat  and  his 
contemporaries  from  carrying  their  investiga- 
tions to  the  point  which  Schleiden,  Schwann, 
Johann  MiJller,  Virchow,  Von  Recklinghausen, 
Cohnheim,  etc.,  have  reached.  It  has  been 
found  that  all  structures  however  complex  are 
made  up  of  cells,  and  that  the  parts  of  a  body 
may  be  resolved  into  a  small  number  of  ele- 
mentary tissues  now  grouped  as:  (1)  epithel- 
ium, which  lines  almost  all  the  cavities  of  the 
body  and  is  directly  or  indirectly  in  communi- 
cation with  the  atmosphere ;  (2)  the  nervous 
tissues,  which  as  nerve  cells  originate  and  as 
nervous  fibres  transmit  all  nervous  impulses ; 
(3)  muscle,  which  produces  motion  whether 
voluntary  or  involuntary;  (4)  glandular  tissue 
which  consists  of  cells  standing  in  close  relation 
with  the  blood-vessels  which  take  from  the 
blood  certain  substances  and  secrete  them;  (5) 
connective  substances  which  support  and  hold 
together  the  more  delicate  and  important  struc- 
tures, especially  forming  the  cartilages  and 
bones.    See  Plants,  Structure  of. 

Many  tissues  have  the  power  of  repairing 
injuries  that  happen  to  them.  This  power  is 
called  regeneration,  and  is  found  especially 
in  the  lower  animals,  in  polvps,  worms  and  in 
many  amphibious  creatures"  and  reptiles.  In 
other  cases  the  lesion  is  supplied  by  a  new 
growth  of  connective  substance.  In  diseases 
the  tissues  undergo  many  changes  and  many  of 
these  diseases  in  the  organism  are  shown  also 
by  the  changing  of  color.  Thp  science  of  such 
Kanges  is  generally  called  pathological  his- 
''Ogy.    It   is    a   comparatively   youngs   science 


and  has  been  cultivated  by  Virchow,  who  was 
the   founder   of   cellular  pathologv. 

Vegetable  histology'  is  that  department  of 
botany  which  deals  with  microscopic  phytotomy 
or  the  anatomy  of  plants,  especially  investigat- 
ing the  plant  cells  and  plant  tissues.  It  is  prop- 
erly subordinate  to  morphology  and  is  a  dis- 
tinctively descriptive  science.  It  deals  with  the 
question  in  what  relation  the  cells  or  forms  of 
tissue  stand  to  the  vital  activity  of  plants,  what 
functions  they  perform,  and  in  what  respect 
they  are  constituted  for  the  fulfilling  of  those 
functions.  (Compare  Cytology).  Owing  to 
the  excessive  minuteness  of  the  cells  which 
form  the  tissues  of  all  plants  the  investigation 
relies  almost  entirely  on  the  microscope,  and 
naturally  has  made  its  advance  in  proportion  as 
the  microscope  has  been  made  more  perfect. 
Microscopes  that  are  now  used  magnify  at 
least  l.CKX)  diameters,  and  the  materials  used 
have  to  be  carefully  prepared  and  mounted. 
Many  of  them  have  to  be  colored  with 
haematoxylin,  fuchsin,  saflFranin,  and  other 
alcoholic  or  aqueous  dyes.  Consult  Bailey,  F. 
R.,  ^Text-Book  of  Histology*  (4th  ed.,  New 
York  1913);  Chamberlain,  C.  J.,  'Methods  in 
Plant  Histology*  (2d  ed.,  Chicago  1905)  ;  Lee, 
A.  B.,  "^Microtomist's  Vade-mecum*  (6th  ed., 
Philadelphia  1905)  ;  Strasburger,  E.,  <Hand- 
book  of  Practical  Botany*  (7th  ed..  New  York 
1911);  Delafield  and  Prudden,  <Handbo.k  of 
Pathological  Anatomy  and  Histology*  (9th  cd., 
New  York  1911). 

HISTORICAL  DETERMINISM.  See 
Determinism. 

HISTORICAL  GEOLOGY,  that  branch 
of  the  subject  that  deals  with  the  orderly  treat- 
ment of  the  events  of  the  past,  chronologically, 
and  with  due  regard  to  cause  and  effect  It 
includes  Paleontology  (q.v.)  and  Stratigraphy 
(q.v.).  See  section  on  Stratigraphy  in  the 
article  on  Geology.  See  also  Paleozoic,  Cam- 
brian, Carboniferous,  etc. 

HISTORICAL  SCHOOL  OF  ECONOM- 
ICS.    See   EcoNo.Mics. 

HISTORY,    ITS    RISE   AND    DEVE ' 
OPMENT:    A    Survey   of   the   Progress    ci 
Historical  Writing  from  its  Origins  tc   the 
Present  Day. 

I.   The  Nature  of  History. 

1.  Meaning  of  the  Term.— The  term  His- 
tory, in  popular  usage,  has  been  applied  ti  two 
somewhat  different  concepts.  It  is  often  used 
to  designate  the  sum  total  of  human  activities, 
and  it  is  when  used  in  this  sense  that  one  often 
hears  the  remark  at  a  particularly  active  or 
critical  period  in  human  events  that  '^r.mv 
history  is  being  made."  A  more  common  ii-iitf 
is  that  w'hich  regards  history  as  the  recon!  >i 
the  events  rather  than  as  the  events  in  ',v 
selves.  In  this  latter  generally  accepted  c  ;i- 
notation  given  to  the  term  history,  two  d  i":::- 
tions  may  be  offered.  In  an  objective  -ense 
history  is,  to  use  the  words  of  Professor 
Robinson,  "all  we  kn^w  about  everything  maJi 
has  ever  done,  or  thought,  or  hoped,  or  fell/" 
Subjectively  or  psychologically  expressed,  his- 
torj'  may  be  regarded  as  a  record,  of  all  that 
has  occurred  within  the  realm  of  human  con- 
sciousness. 

In   this   sense  ot    a   record   of   the   acri 
of  the  human  race,  history  has  been  reg 


-Q  Q < J  no  A 


■-'06 


HISTORY.  JTS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


)\ 


mc,    particularly    in    earlier    periods,    as 
ily   ail  art  —  a   branch  of   lilcratiire.     By 
imially   incriising  minilur  of   autlioritifs 
tcndtci,  however,  in  lis  modern   form,  to 
isidered  as   in   the  main   a   genetic   social 
',   which    i-   concerned    with    reconstruct- 
■  past  thoughts  and  activities  of  human- 
1   the   present  article  history  will   he   re- 
ip  the  sense  of  a  science  rather  than  as 
;     Ht  is  the  thesis  of  the  writer  that  his- 
:\      an    lay   no   more   claim   to   being   an   art 
;;  ..i;    .mv   other   branch   of    social    science   and 
iliat  while  artistic  achievement  may  be  desired 
in  history  it  is  quite  subordinate  in  importance 
!  ■  -I'tntific  accuracy  and  constructive  thought. 
M  t,  progress  in  historical   writing  may  al- 
■    !  lie  regarded  as  a  development  from  an  art 
lu  a   ^ciencc.     It   is   this   which  constitutes   the 
progress  from  Livy  to  Ranke  or  from  Herodo- 
tus to  Gardiner. 

2.  Fallacy  of  the  Term  Pre-historic—  Be- 
fore the  important  developments  in  anthropology 
and   pre-historic   archa'ology,   which  have   done 
so   much   to   extend   our  knowledge   of   human 
activities   in   the   distant   past,   it   w-as   the   con- 
veiitii  nal  practice  to  limit  the  term  history  to  a 
fee    :     of  those  events  which  were  described  or 
pri       ved  in  literary  remains.     Now,  however, 
w !"      archaeology  tells  one  much  more  of  cer- 
tain jihascs  of  the  early  life  of  man  than  was 
one     known    of     even     more     recent     periods 
through  literary  evidence,  it  is  no  longer  ac- 
cunce    nor    logical    to    use   the    term    «pre-his- 
t'.ri  ,»   unless  it  is  employed  to  designate  that 
xi^'ie  and  hypothetical  period  in  the  beginnings 
!    1   iman   development   of   which   there   exists 
■  ■  :•   sitive  and  tangible  record,  or  unless  one  is 
:i.i;.  ig  his  conception  to  history  as  a  branch 
=  '  erature.     In    the   place    of    the    now   gen- 
ail  v  discarded  and  discredited  term  '^pre-his- 
u.ric'  there  has  been  substituted  the  concept  of 
"pre-Iiterary    history,"    as    descriptive    of    the 
records  of  that  period  of  human   development 
:i-i<;  the  information  is  revealed  by  archseol- 
.;'.   rather  than  literaxy  evidence.     In  short, 
:.    Iia^  been  agreed  that  a   fundamental   fallacy 
and  <  ontradiction  is  involved  in  the  use  of  the 
term    "pre-historic"    for   any   period    of    which 
there    is    any    considerable    record    preserved, 
h.  ;ber  in  writing  or  in  the  artifacts  of  daily 
t.     With    recent    writers    "pre-historic"    has 
il'ved    the    term    "pre-Adamite"    into    that 
cbiiyion  of  discarded  categories  which  is  being 
continually  expanded  as  an' inevitable  result  of 
the  growth  of  the  khowledge  of  human  activi- 
ties in  both  time  and  space. 

It  has  been  deerncd  inadvisable  at  this  point 

'n    *.h'.  article  to  discuss  the  various  interpre- 

'.'   '  •;    of    what   history"  means    or    should    be 

lui'il/  concerned  with  narrating.     It  is  in  great 

!  .ti      ihe   task  of   this   whole   article   to   reveal 

the    liverse  interpretations  of  history,  and  this 

niihh   debatcd^Jroblem  of   what  ■hist'or\'  means 

;    has  been  thought  to  mean  will  be  shown  in 

'•istorical  mutations  and  transformations. 

•  1     '   IE     F.ssF.xTi.M.     Prelimivaries     to     the 

'    Rir.IN     AND    nK\'^Uj!'ME.\T    Ol      HiSTORV. 

1  Archaeology  as  the  "Threshold"  of  His- 
tory —  Pre-literary  History.— Having  seen 
that   liistory  in   the   modern   sense  of   the   term 

''•    '  the    b^r:*"!'?^'^'    '^f    rtnv    rr-rord    of 

net  and  .. 
Mate  origin  ' 


artifacts  which  were  sufficiently  distinctive  in' 
form  and  durable  in  material  composition  to 
have  been  preserved  through  the  ages  as  evi- 
dence of  what  mankind  was  accomplishing  in 
the  vast  expanse  of  time  before  the  art  of 
writing  was  mastered.  History,  thus,  may 
probably  be  said  to  have  had  its  real  origin  in 
the  disputed  eolithic  period,  and  the  first  his- 
torical document  may  be  accurately  held  to 
have  been  the  first  indisputable  eolith,  or  if  the 
eolithic  period  be  denied,  the  first  definite 
paleolith   of   the   river   drift  period. 

Space  does  not  here  allow  even  the  briefest 
resume  of  that  most  interesting  story  of  the 
early  development  of  mankind  as  revealed  by 
the  artifacts  which  have  been  preserved.  The 
thrilling  evidences  of  man's  interests  and 
activities  in  that  almost  inmcasurable  period  of 
a  quarter  of  a  million  years  which  are  revealed 
by  the  "coup  dc  poings"  of  the  river  drift 
period,  the  remarkable  flaked  flints  of  the  cave 
period,  as  well  as  the  engraving  on  animal 
bones  and  the  early  paintings  from  such  sites 
as  Altamira  and  Font-de-Gaume  and  the 
wonderful  products  of  the  bronze  and  iron 
ages,  are  all  subjects  of  the  most  compelling 
interest,  for  the  complete  treatment  of  which 
the  reader  must^be  referred  to  the  article  on 
"Archaeology."  i^uflfice  it  to  say  at  this  point 
that  these  archaeological  products  of  the  pre- 
literary  period  mark  the  real  threshold  of  his- 
tory. 

Nor  can  one,  in  the  space,  allotted  to  this 
article,  do  more  than  to  refer  to  the  origin  in 
modern  times  of  the  science  of  pre-historic 
archaeology,  so  inextricably  connected  with 
the  work  of  such  men  as  Boucher  de  Perthes, 
Sir  John  Evans,  de  Mortillet,  Rutot,  Dechelette, 
Cartailhac,  Breuil,  Schmidt,  Obermaier, 
Montelius,  Peet,  Schliemann  and  Sir  Arthur 
Evans,  and  which  has  rediscovered  what  is, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  time  which  elapsed, 
the  greater  portion  of  human  history.  Even 
less  can  be  said  concerning  the  work  of  geolog- 
ists like  Lyell,  Le  Conte,  Winchell,  Sollas, 
Geikie,  Penck  and  Chamberlain;  of  biologists 
such  as  Darwin,  Wallace,  Huxley  and  Haeckel; 
and  of  anthropologists  of  the  type  of  Tylor, 
Ayebury,  McLennan,  Morgan  and  their  more 
critical  successors,  all  of  whom  have  recon- 
structed the  prevailing  notions  of  the  origin  of 
the  human  race,  of  chronologv  and  the  eras 
of  human  development  earlier  fixed  by 
Julius  Africanus,  Eusebius,  and  Jerome,  and 
have  made  it  possible  for  the  present  genera- 
tion to  interpret  the  real  significance  of  the 
archaeological  remains,  rather  than  being  com- 
pelled to  view  them  in  fhe  manner  of  earlier 
generations  as  "thunder  stones,"  or  some  other 
object  of  fancv  and  superstition. 

2.  The  Mastery  of  the  Art  of  Writing.— 
Though  the  non-literary  archaeological  remains 
of  early  man  are  of  the  utmost  aid  and  im- 
portance in  reconstructing  his  modes  of  life  and 
activity,  no  extensive  or  ample  record  of  past 
events  was  possible  until  some  progress  had 
been  made  in  the  way  of  being  able  to  give  uni- 
form objective  and  permanent  expression  to 
human  thought  and  action,  in  other  words,  until 
the  art   of  writing  had  been  mastered. 

The  obscure  origins  of  the  art  of  w^riting 
must  be  regarded  as  dating  back  to  the  picture 
writing  which  first  appears  on  the  implements 
and   the   cave   walls   of   the   middle   and   later 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


207 


paleolithic  periods.  Before  these  pictograms, 
however,  could  be  regarded  as  real  writing,  it 
was  necessary  that  they  should  pass  through 
three  well  defined  stages  of  development.  In  the 
first  place,  the  pictures  had  to  become  conven- 
tionalized, so  that  they  always  had  the  same 
appearance  and  designated  the  same  object. 
Next,  it  was  necessary  that  they  should  not 
only  refer  to  a  concrete  object,  but  also  be- 
come the  symbols  of  abstract  conceptions. 
Finally,  it  was  essential  that  the  conventional- 
ized symbols  should  pass  into  that  stage  where 
they  combined  a  representation  of  an  abstract 
conception  and  the  sound  of  the  human  voice. 
This  last  stage  itself  passed  through  a  num- 
ber of  developments.  In  the  simplest^  and 
most  elementary  form  of  this  *sound  writing" 
each  symbol  represented  an  entire  word.  Some 
languages,  such  as  the  Chinese,  have  never 
passed  beyond  this  monosyllabic  stage.  Nor- 
mally, however,  the  symbc-ls  usually  came  to 
represent  not  a  whole  word  but  a  syHable. 
Sooner  or  later,  the  various  possible  sounds  of 
the  human  voice  were  anal}'zed  and  came -to  be 
represented  by  separate  sj'mbols  or  letters,  and 
the  alphabet  thereby  came  into  existence.  The 
first  known  exam.ple  of  a  true  alphabet  ap- 
peared among  the  Phoenicians  about  1000  b.c. 
Of  its  origins  little  is  known  further  than  that 
the  Phoenicians  borrowed  most  of  these  signs 
from  their  neighbors  in  Egypt,  Babylonia  and 
Crete.  The  Phoenician  alphabet  contained 
twenty-two  consonants  and  it  remained  for  the 
Greeks  later  to  perfect  the  modern  alphabet  by 
adding  the  vowels.  There  seem  to  have  been 
at  least  five  independent  centres  of  the  origin  of 
writing,  namely,  Crete,  Egypt,  Mesopotamia, 
China  and  Central  America. 

Along  with  the  mastery  of  the  art  of  writ- 
ing went  the  provision  of  materials  on  which  to 
set  down  the  desired  letters  and  words.  Stone 
columns  and  walls  and  even  the  clay  tablets  of 
the  Babylonians,  whatever  their  virtues  from 
the  standpoint  of  permanence,  were  clumsy, 
awkward  and  restricted  writing  materials.  The 
Egyptians  solved  the  difficulty  by  utilizing  the 
membrane  of  the  papyrus  reed.  Later,  parch- 
ment was  fashioned  from  the  skin  of  animals 
for  the  use  of  those  peoples  where  papyrus  was 
not  available.  Paper,  made  originally  from  silk, 
first  appeared  among  the  Chinese  about  200  B.C. 
The  Arabs  devised  a  paper  made  from  cotton 
fibre,  about  750  a.d.  This  was  brought  into 
Spain,  where  flax  was  substituted  for  cotton 
and  the  modern  linen  paper  came  into  use 
about  1250.  With  the  provision  of  an  alphabet 
and  writing  materials,  historical  writing  could 
begin  that  long  course  of  development  which 
was  to  bring  it  from  Herodotus  and  Thucydides 
to  Ranke,  Aulard,  Gardiner  and  Osgood.  Pro- 
fessor Breasted  has  well  stated  the  importance 
of  this  step  in  the  evolution  of  civilization  in 
general  andof  historical  writing  in  particular, 
/*The  invention  of  writing  and  of  a  convenient 
^y^tcm  of  records  on  paper  has  had  a  greater 
influence  in  uplifting  the  human  race  than  any 
other  intellectual  achievement  in  the  career  of 
man.  It  was  more  important  than  all  the  bat- 
tlesever  fought  and  all  the  constitutions  ever 
devised. »  Before  a  true  historical  perspective 
could  develop,  however,  it  was  indispensable 
that  some  method  of  measuring  time  should  be 
discovered  and  a  scientific  system  of  chronology 
evolved. 


3.  The  Development  of  the  Conception  of 
Time  and  the  Provision  of  a  Chronology. — 

Indispensable  as  some  method  of  measuring 
time  was  for  chronicling  the  thoughts  and  ac- 
tions of  man,  it  was  not  for  this  purpose  that 
the  calendar  was  originally  developed.  As  Pro- 
fessor Shotwell  has  remarked,  and  Professor 
Webster  has  shown  in  greater  detail,  it  was  the 
deeds  of  the  gods  and  not  of  men  that  the 
early  calendars  were  designed  to  fix  and  record. 
The  methods  of  measuring  time  grew  up  about 
the  need  for  determining  the  dates  of  tabooed 
or  holy  days  and  for  fixing  and  recording  the 
occurrence  of  unusual  natural  phenomena  which 
were  believed  to  have  some  religious  signifi- 
cance. In  other  words,  the  concept  of  time  was 
born  with  the  dawn  of  the  consciousness  of  the 
repetition  of  natural  processes  and  phenomena 
and  the  necessity  of  differentiating  between  day^ 
on  the  basis  of  their  particular  virtue  or  quali- 
ties. The  perfection  of  the  methods  of  measur- 
ing time  has  been  a  gradual  proce&s^of  transi- 
tion "from  luck  to  mathematics."  Tit  was  not 
until  long  after  crude  calendars  haa~t)een  pro- 
vided for  these  religious  uses  that  they  were 
utilized  to  fashion  a  chronology  for  recording 
historic  events. 

The  simplest  and  most  primitive  type  of  cal- 
endar was  the  lunar  calendar  based  on  the 
phases  of  the  moon.  The  basis  was  the  lunar 
month  of  29  and  one-half  days.  From  this  it 
was  possible  to  provide  roughly  for  convenient 
units  of  measurement,  both  longer  and  shorter 
than  the  month.  The  lunar  fortnight  was  a 
widespread  unit  of  time,  and  weeks  were  se- 
cured from  the  quarters  of  the  moon  or  from 
a  division  of  the  months  into  three  periods  of 
10  days  each,  the  latter  being  closest  mathemat- 
ical solution.  Twelve  lunar  months  produced  a 
lunar  year  of  354  days,  and  to  keep  the  months 
synchronized  with  the  seasonal  divisions,  a  thir- 
teenth month  was  interpolated  at  appropriate 
intervals.  A  longer  interval  was  the  lunar  cycle 
of  about  19  years,  w'hich  came  into  use  among 
the  Greeks  about  750  B.C.  Though  the  lunar 
calendar  provided  no  exact  divisions  of  time, 
either  long  or  short,  and  was  continually  getting 
out  of  adjustment,  it  was  tolerated  and  re- 
tained by  all  the  peoples  of  antiquity  except  the 
Egyptians,  who  share  with  the  aboriginal  in- 
habitants of  Mexico  the  honor  of  having  first 
evolved  the  solar  year  and  the  beginnings  of  the 
modern  calendar.  The-  agricultural  life  of  the 
dwellers  in  the'  Nile  valley  and  the  importance 
of  the  Sun-God  in  Egj^pt  tended  to  increase  the 
importance  of  the  sun  at  the  expense  of  the 
moon.  Accordingly,  as  early  as  4241  B.C.,  the 
earliest  fixed  date  in  history,  the  Egyptians  had 
devised  a  solar  year  of  365  days,  with  12  months 
of  30  days  each  and  five  feast  days  at  the  end 
of  each  year.  The  seven-day  week  of  the  mod- 
ern calendar,  cutting  thfou,gh  both  month  and 
year,  was  the  product  of  the  ingenuity  and  reli- 
gious arrangements  of  the  Hebrews.  As  early 
as  238  B.C.  Alexandrian  scientists  had  devised 
the  quadrennial  leap  year,  and  during  the  Hel- 
lenistic period  the  TTebrew  week  wa'^  adapted 
to  form  the  planetary  week  of  the  modern  cal- 
endar. In  46  B.C.  Julius  Caesar  prescribed  for 
the  Roman  world  this  solar  year,  but  the 
planetary  week  did  not  come  into  general  use 
in  Rome  before  the  2d  century  a.d.  The  final 
step  in  perfecting  the  calendar  was  taken  by  the 
authority    of    Pope    Grcgor\'    XIII    in     1582. 


208 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


Eleven  days  were  dropped  fri)m  the  calendar 
and  centennial  years  were  re^^arded  as  leap 
years  only  when  divisible  by  40U. 

The  provision  of  some  sort  of  a  crude  cal- 
endar was  an  essential  prerequisite  of  systematic 
history,  but  the  process  had  to  be  carried  on  a 
step  further  before  the  mechanism  for  measur- 
ing and  recording  time  was  sulliciently  perfected 
to  be  of  any  considerable  service  to  the  histo- 
rian. It  was  not  enough  to  be  able  to  measure 
time  by  the  year  and  its  fractions;  it  was  neces- 
sary to  have  some  method  of  identifying  suc- 
cessive years,  in  other  words,  to  provide  a 
chronology.  While  the  Egyptians  had  an  ad- 
mirable instrument  for  fashioning  a  scientific 
chronology  in  the  astronomical  "Solhic  cycle" 
of  1461  years,  they  made  no  use  of  it  and  never 
provided  a  scientific  chronology.  The  earliest 
Egyptian  approximation  to  a  chronology  was 
the  annalistic  expedient  of  naming  the  years  by 
some  great  event  which  happened  therein.  The 
famous  "Palermo  Stele"  constitutes  the  earliest 
remaining  record  of  these  year-lists  and  is  sup- 
posed, in  its  original  complete  form,  to  have 
identified  the  seven  hundred  years  from  3400 
B.c  to  2700  B.C.  An  advance  in  methodology 
was  made  when  the  years  were  named  from  the 
regnal  years  of  a  particular  king.  The  only 
great  list  of  Eg>'ptian  regnal  years  which  has 
been  preserved,  even  in  a  fragmentary  condi- 
tion, is  the  precious  "Turin  Papyrus,"  which 
has  to  be  supplemented  by  the  lists  inscribed  on 
the  temple  walls  of  the  later  dynasties.  _  About 
275  B.C.  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  commissioned  a 
learned  Eg\-ptian  priest,  Manetho,  to  collect  and 
translate  into  Greek  all  the  Egyptian  annals  and 
regnal  lists.  The  fragmentary  remains  of  the 
labors  of  Manetho  have  constituted  the  skeleton 
upon  which  modern  Egyptologists  have  recon- 
structed the  chronology  of  ancient  Egypt.  The 
Babylonians  never  passed  beyond  the  annalistic 
stage  of  chronology  —  namely,  the  identifying 
of  years  by  some  conspicuous  occurrence.  A 
contemporary  of  Manetho,  Berossos,  a  Babylo- 
nian priest  at  the  court  of  Antiochus  II,  tried 
to  do  for  Babylonian  chronology  what  Manetho 
had  done  for  Egyptian,  but  to  judge  from  what 
remains  of  his  work  in  the  fragments  of  copy- 
ists, he  seems  to  have  been  less  successful.  _  A 
far  greater  exactness  was  given  to  Assyrian 
chronology  by  the  fact  that  the  years  of  a  given 
king  were  identified  by  the  annual  appointment 
of  an  official  known  as  a  /mimu.  As  the  name 
of  the  contemporary  limmu  was  given  in  the 
notices  of  events  contained  in  the  clay  records, 
the  lists  of  limmi.  dating  from  892  b  c.  to  704 
B.C.,  enable  the  historian  to  establish  with  a  high 
degree  of  accuracy  the  Assyrian  chronology.  In 
the  later  period  of  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  his- 
tory there  developed  some  conception  of  an  "era," 
which  dated  from  the  reign  of  Nabonassar.  747 
B.C.  The  Ik'brcvv  chronology  never  developed 
further  than  the  crude  genealogical  system  of 
reckoning  by  generations,  the  conventional 
length  of  which  was  40  years.  Some  vague  con- 
ception of  eras  seems  also  to  have  arisen,  as, 
for  example,  the  period  from  Abraham  to 
David,  or  from  David  to  the  "captivity."  The 
classic  examples  of  the  Hebrew  chronological 
system  are  to  be  found  in  the  opening  of  the 
first  book  of  Chronicles  and  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Matthew.  The  early  Greek  historians,  in 
spite    of    an    admirable    starting   point    for    the 


Greek  era  in  the  semi-mythical  siege  of  Troy 
and  an  unusually  ingenious  mechanism  for 
measuring  lime  in  the  "Cycle  of  Melon,"  did 
no  belter  than  their  predecessors  in  creating  a 
chronology.  Down  to  the  middle  of  the  5lh 
century  u.c.  the  only  chronological  records  po.s- 
sessed  by  the  (ireeks  were  ihe  local  genealogies 
and  the  names  of  archons,  priests  and  priest- 
esses. The  early  attempt  of  Hellanicus  of 
Lesbos,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  5th  century 
B.C.,  to  fashion  a  chronology  from  genealogies 
and  name  lists  has  been  described  by  Bury  as 
"an  ingenious  edifice  erected  on  foundations 
that  had  no  solidity,"  but  even  the  attempt  had 
some  significance.  i!^eilher  Herodotus  nor 
Thucydides  made  any  attempt  at  solving  the 
problem  of  chronology,  and  the  later  Greek  his- 
torians finished  their  work  with  no  more  satis- 
factory system  of  chronology  than  the  clumsy 
method  of  reckoning  by  Olympiac  years  intro- 
duced by  Tima^us  about  300  n.c.  The  Olympic 
"era"  was  dated  from  the  alleged  Olympic 
games  in  776  b.c  The  laudable  effort  of  Era- 
tosthenes, about  80  years  after  Timaeus,  to  put 
Greek  chronology  on  the  firm  basis  of  astro- 
nomical measurements  was  little  utilized  or  en- 
couraged by  the  historians,  though  the  astro- 
nomical researches  of  the  Alexandrian  scientists 
were  of  the  utrtjost  importance  for  the  future 
of  chronology. Y The  practical  minded  Romans 
were  the  first  people  of  antiquity  to  devise  a 
rational  and  reliable  system  of  chronology. 
They  dated  their  years  from  the  mythical  foun- 
dation of  Rome  in  753  b.c.  The  monstrosities 
of  the  Christian  chronology  introduced  by  Julius 
Africanus,  Eusebius  and  Jerome,  as  well  as 
the  real  "foundations  of  modern  scientific  chro- 
nology with  Scaliger's  *De  emendatione  tem- 
porum'  and  Dom  Clement's  'L'Art  de  verifier 
les  dates)  will  be  dealt  with  later.  It  is  suffi- 
cient here  to  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  only 
the  Roman  chronology  enabled  an  historical 
writer  of  antiquity  to  deal  with  assurance  with' 
anything  save  contemporary  history.  Th's 
serves  in  part  to  explain  why  the  great  histori- 
cal works  of  Greece  were  strictly  in  the  field  of 
recent  and  contemporary  history.  Now  that 
the  development  of  the  indispensable  prerequi- 
sites of  historical  writing  has  been  briefly 
touched  upon,  attention  may  be  turned  to  the 
origins  of  historical  writing  in  antiquity. 

III.  Oriental  Beginnings  of  Historicai. 
Writing. 
While  the  climatic  conditions  have  made 
Egvpt  a  veritable  archaeological  museum,  or,  as 
Professor  Breasted  has  termed  it,  "a  vast  his- 
torical volume,"  and  have  made  possible  the 
preservation  of  very  valuable  and  extensive 
sources  of  historical  information  in  the  remain.s 
of  the  architecture,  the  engineering  feats,  the 
plastic  art,  and  even  the  inscriptions  cut  on  the 
stone  surfaces  of  tombs,  palaces,  temples  and 
monuments,  there  have  been  few  or  no  Egj'p- 
tian  historical  writings  preserved.  With  the 
exception  of  a  few  fragmentary  annals,  such  as 
the  "Palermo  Stele"  no  native  Egyptian  histori- 
cal writings  have  been  discovered  except  the 
garbled  and  incomplete  work  of  Manetho  re- 
ferred to  above.  One  may  safely  agree  with 
Professor  Hall  that  "no  real  historian  is 
known  to  us  in  Pharaonic  Egypt,  nor  is  it  likely 
that  one  will  ever  be  discovered." 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


900 


While  the  true  historical  narrative  can 
scarcely  be  held  to  have  originated  with  the 
Babylonians  or  Assyrians,  they  certainly  made 
a  closer  approximation  to  this  achievement  than 
the  Egyptians.  The  earliest  historical  writings 
of  the  Babylonians,  dating  back  to  the  third 
millenium  B.C.,  were  the  votive  inscriptions,  giv- 
ing the  names  of  the  kings,  their  genealogies 
and  a  record  of  the  buildings  they  erected. 
The  great  cylinder  inscriptions  of  Gudea  (2450 
B.C.)  are  a  valuable  source  for  the  contemporary 
manners  and  customs,  while  the  Code  of  Ham- 
murabi (2150  B.C.)  is  probably  the  most  irnport- 
ant  sinele  document  in  the  history  of  jurispru^ 
dence.  {jn  the  period  following  Hammurai)i 
there  were  important  writings  of  the  kings  set- 
ting forth  their  achievements,  but  in  an 'epic 
rather  than  a  truly  historical  mannerTj  The  sec- 
ond Babylonian  kingdom  of  the  6th  century  B.C. 
contributed  some  important  chronicles  epitomiz- 
ing some  much  earlier  narratives,  which 
are  now  preserved  only  in  fragments,  and  lists 
of  the  Babylonian  kings.  While  the  Babylo- 
nians were  concerned  mainly  with  the  arts  of 
peace,  the  Assyrians  dealt  primarily  with  the 
feats  of  war  in  their  annals  and  campaign  and 
votive  inscriptions.  A  most  important  histor- 
ical document,  ascribed  by  some  to  Babylonian 
and  by  others  to  Assyrian  sources,  is  the  'Syn- 
chronous History,  >  compiled  in  the  8th  century 
B.C.  This  describes  the  successive  boundary  dis- 
putes between  Babylonia  and  Assyria  from 
1600  to  800  B.C.,  with  a  list  of  the  kings  who 
participated.  Finally,  from  Assyrian  sources 
there  are  the  above  mentioned  lists  of  limmi  or 
the  eponym  canon,  covering  the  period  from 
892-704  B.C.  The  Babylonian  counterpart  of 
Manetho's  work,  Berossos'  history  of  Babylonia 
in  three  books,  written  about  280  B.C.,  was  the 
first  systematic  historical  narrative  produced  by 
a  Babylonian  or  Assyrian  scribe.  It  has,  un- 
fortunately, been  lost  and  only  survives  in 
scanty  references  in  Josephus,  Eusebius  and  a 
few  other  later  historians.  Whatever  its  value, 
its  date  shows  that  real  historical  narrative  was 
not  a  product  of  the  period  of  the  height  of 
either  Babylonian  or  Assyrian  culture. 

^he  honor  of  having  first  produced  a  true 
historical  narrative  of  considerable  scope  and 
high  relative  veracity  must  be  accorded  to  the 
Hebrews  of  ancient  Palestine^]  The  conventional 
assumption  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the 
Pentateuch  and  the  synchronous  nature  of  its 
books,  questioned  by  Hobbes  in  1651  and  by 
Spinoza  in  1670,  was  riddled  by  the  French 
physician,  Jean  Astruc  in  1753,  and  the  German 
theologian,  Karl  David  Ilgen  in  1799.  The  true 
nature  of  the  composite  authorship  of  tlie  Pen- 
tateuch and  the  widely  divergent  dates  of  the 
composition  of  its  various  books  were  estab- 
lished as  a  result  of  the  work  of  a  number  of 
courageous  and  brilliant  scholars,  the  most 
prominent  of  whom  were  Professor  De  Wette 
of  Jena,  Professor  Hupfeld  of  Halle,  Pro- 
fessor George  of  Berlin,  Bishop  Colenso  of 
Natal,  Professor  Kuenen  of  Leyden,  Professor 
Robertson  Smitfh  of  Cambridge.  Professor 
Bacon  of  Yale,  and,  above  all,  Professor  Julius 
Wellhausen  of  Greifswald  and  Gottingen. 
Their  labors  have  revealed  the  fact  that  the 
PentJPteuch  was  the  work  of  some  five  different 
authors,  or  groups  of  authors,  writing  between 
900  and  450  b.c.,«  their  diverse  writings  were 
consolidated   in   the   Pentateuch,   as   it   is   now 

VOL.    14  —  14 


arranged,  some  time  before  400  B.C.  The  oldest, 
or  "Jahvist"  source,  was  written  about  900  B.C., 
the  next,  or  "Elohist,"  about  725  B.C.,  the  third, 
or  "Deuteronomist,"  from  about  700  to  620  B.C., 
the  fourth,  or  "Holiness  Code,**  about  575  B.C., 
and  the  last,  or  "Priestly  Book,**  about  450  B.C. 
Their  union,  upon  the  fifth  source  as  a  basis, 
was  accomplished  some  time  in  the  5lh  century 
B.C.  The  beginnings  of  the  historical  narrative 
among  the  Hebrews  were  stimulated  by  the 
great  expansion  of  Hebrew  prosperity  and  pres- 
tige under  Saul,  David  ami  Solomon.  As  Pro- 
fessor Moore  has  said,T^the  making  of  great 
history  has  often  given ''a  "first  impulse  to  the 
writing  of  history,  and  we  may  well  believe  that 
it  was  so  in  Israel,  and  that  the  beginning  of 
Hebrew  historical  literature,  in  the  proper  sense 
of  the  word,  was  made  with  Saul  and  David.** 
This  origin  of  Hebrew  historical  writing,  which 
marks  the  earliest  appearance  of  true  historical 
narrative  of  which  any  record  has  been  pre- 
served, is  to  be  found  in  the  work  of  the  un- 
known author  of  the  "Jahvist**  sources  of  the 
Pentateuch,  Joshua,  the  Books  of  Samuel  and 
the  opening  of  the  first  Book  of  Kings.  Of  the 
labors  of  this  writer,  who,  though  he  can  claim 
the  honor  of  being  the  first  of  the  line  of  true 
historians,  is  known  only  to  students  by  the 
recently  acquired  appellation  of  "J,**  Professor 
Breasted  makes  the  following  comment,  j^ey 
are  the  earliest  example  of  historical  writings 
in  prose  which  we  possess  among  any  people,'? 
and  their  nameless  author  is  the  earliest  hi^ 
torian  whom  we  have  found  in  the  early  world.** 
The  "Jahvist**  narrative  reaches  its  highest  \ 
point  in  2  Samuel,  ix-xx,  which  is  probably  the 
best  example  of  both  Hebrew  and  Oriental  his-  i 
torical  writing.  Of  this  passage  Edouard 
Meyer  says :  "It  is  astonishing  that  historical 
literature  of  this  character  should  have  been 
possible  in  Israel  at  this  time.  It  stands 
far  above  everything  which  we  know  else- 
where of  ancient  Oriental  historical  writing.*^ 
The  remaining  historical  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  Canon  were  the  Books  of  Kings, 
which  were  written  about  575  B.C.,  and  Chron- 
icles —  Ezra  —  Nehemiah,  written  about  300  b.c. 
The  Books  of  Kings  were  the  first  practical 
illustration  of  Polybius',  Dionysius  of  Halicar- 
nassys'  and  Lord  Bolingbroke's  view  of  history 
as  r^philosophy  teaching  by  example,**  for  the 
aumor  sought  primarily  to  convince  his  people 
by  historical  illustrations  of  the  disasters  that 
had  come  to  the  Hebrews  by  deserting  their 
national  religion.  7  Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah 
constitute  the  woi4slof  a  single  author,  who  by 
genealogies  and  narrative  surveys  the  whole  of 
Hebrew  history  with  the  aim  of  glorifying 
through  tremendous  exaggerations  the  splendor 
of  the  Hebrew  kingdom  under  David  and  Solo- 
mon, and  of  re-emphasizing  the  warning  of  the 
author  of  Kings  respecting  the  penalty  of 
deviation  from  the  true  religion.  Both  Kings 
and  Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah  are  distinctly  in- 
ferior to  "J**  from  the  standpoint  of  accuracy 
and  lucid  narrative.  One  of  the  greatest  prod- 
ucts of  Hebrew  historiography  is  a  work,  which, 
for  .some  curious  reason,  has  not  been  included 
in  the  Protestant  canon  of  the  Bible  —  the  first 
Book  of  Maccabees.  This  narrative,  w-ritten 
about  125  B.C.  by  a  devout  and  vigorous  Sad- 
ducee  and  an  ardent  admirer  of  the  Asmonean 
house— ;a  sort  of  a  Ju^ean  Tmtschke  — tells  the  ' 
stirring'story  oT  Hebrew  fustory'from  the  con- 


810 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


quest  of  Palestine  In-  Alexander  the  (ireat  to 
the  accession  of  lohn  Hvriamis.  The  work 
centres  ahoiit  the  deliverance  of  Palestine  from 
Syrian  domination  throii^'h  the  military  ex- 
ploits of  Judas  Maccalueus  and  liis  successors. 
While  fired  hy  the  thrills  of  patriotic  pride,  the 
author  produced  a  uni(iue  work  for  his  time, 
in  that  he  explained  the  victories  of  the  Hebrews 
as  having  resulted  i  rom  the  personal  ability 
and  couraKC  of  the  Asmoncans  and  not  from  the 
direct  inlvervcntion  of  the  Deity  in  behalf  of  the 
Jews.  [Un fortunately,  however,  the  Christian 
histori:m>-  of  meili;eval  Kurope  took  as  their 
Hebrew  model  not  the  brilliant  secular  nar- 
rative of  First  Maccabees,  but  sou^,'ht  to 
strengthen  their  followers'  zeal  and  to  terrorize 
their  opponents  by  imitation  of  the  more  con- 
ventional Hebrew  talcs  of  the  miraculous  iiUer- 
position  of  the  Deity  in  rewarding  the  faithful 
and  punishing  the  sinner^^hc  last  of  the  dis- 
tinguished Hebrew  historians  was  Flavins  Jo- 
scphus  (c.  37-105  a.d.).  He  was  the  national 
historian  of  the  Jews  and,  writing  after  the 
destruction  of  the  power  of  his  people  in  70  a.d., 
he  tried  to  compensate  for  the  contemporary 
distress  of  the  Jewish  people  by  emphasizing 
the  glories  of  their  past.  Consequently,  he 
almost  outdid  the  author  of  Chronicles-Ezra- 
Nchcmiah  in  his  exaggeration  of  the  wealth, 
population  and  international  prestige  of  ancient 
Palestine.  His  two  chief  works  were  the  'War 
of  the  Jews'  and  the  'Antiquities  of  the  Je\ys.> 
In  his  treatment  of  the  Old  Testament  period 
his  narrative  is  highly  unreliable,  but  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  post-Maccabean  era  is  a  most 
valuable  source  of  information,  though  not 
wholly  free  from  exaggeration  and  credulity. 
He  wrote  in  Greek  with  a  considerable  degree 
of  JiWerary  skill  and  he  has  been  referred  to  as 
thel^ivy  of  the  Jews,**  but,  while  the  com- 
parison is  not  without  some  basis,  Josephus  did 
not  equal  the  national  historian  of  Rome  in 
either  literary  merit  or  in  accuracy  of  statcmcnt~\ 
Though  the  Hebrews  brought  into  being  tWc' 
historical  narrative,  Hebrew  historiography  did 
not  afTect  the  general  current  of  the  develop- 
ment of  historical  writing  until  after  the  Chris- 
tians had  taken  over  the  sacred  books  of  the 
Jews  and  used  them  as  the  basis,  not  only  of 
rnuch  of  their  theology,  but  also  as  the  founda- 
tion of  their  chronology  and  their  synthesis  of 
the  history  of  the  past.  It  is  to  the  Greeks  that 
attention  must  lie  turned  in  describing  the  chief 
source  of  the  origins  and  development  of  the 
type  of  historical  writing  which  dominated 
classical  antiquity  and  prevailed  to  the  time  of 
Julius  Africanus,  Orosius  and  Eusebius. 

IV.  Historical  Writing  Among  the  Greeks. 
1.  The  Intellectual  Setting  of  the  Origins 
of  Greek  Historiography.— The  birth  of  his- 
torical writing  in  Greece  retiiiired  several  essen- 


tial conditions  which  did  not  exist  before  the 

B.C.,  namely,  the  i 
the  critical  rejection  ofTfie  current   mythology 


6th  century 


writing  of  prose. 


concerning  Greek  origins  and  the  stimulation  of 
interest  in  social  origins  and  instifutionsTl  By 
the  middle  of  the  6th  century  these  indisnrrr^able 
prerequi>ites  of  historv  had  come  into  being  in 
the  city  of  Miletus  in  Ionia.  Cadmus  of  Miletus, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  6th  century,  had  intro- 
duced the  practice  of  writing  prose  instead  of 
poetry  and  ranks  as  one  of  the  earliest  of  Greek 


prose  writers  or  lofiugraphoi.  At  the  same 
I)erio(l  there  was  coming  into  existence  that 
speculative  Ionian  philosophy  to  which  the  world 
owes  the  origin  of  free  thought  and  critical  phi- 
losophy. As  Professor  Bury  has  said.  "Our 
deepest  gratitude  is  due  to  the  Greeks  as  the 
originators  of  liberty  of  thought  and  discussion. 
Ionia  in  Asia  Minor  was  the  cradle  of  free 
speculation.  The  history  of  Europe^i}^  science 
and  European  philosophy  begins  in^oiiia.  Here 
in  the  6th  and  .^th  centuries  B.C.  the  earliest 
philosophers  by  using  their  reason  sought  to 
penetrate  into  the  origin  and  structure  of  the 
world-^They  began  the  work  of  destroying 
orthodox  views  and  religious  faiths."  Finally, 
the  Pjsrsian  absorption  of  Ionia  tended  to  break 
down  the  provincialism  of  the  Ionian  Greeks, 
through  that  all-important  factor  of  the  contact 
of  cultures,  and  to  arouse  their  interest  in  the 
civilization  of  the  diverse  peoples  who  dwelt 
in  the  great  empire  of  which  they  had  recently 
become  a  part.  The  origin  of  Greek  historical 
literature,  then,  was  a  part  of  that  great  in- 
tellectual movement  conventionally  known  as  the 
rise  of  the  logograplioi  and  of  the  critical  Greek 
philosophy  in  Ionia.  To  these  more  general  or 
cultural  explanations  of  the  appearance  of  the 
first  Greek  historical  literature,  there  should  be 
added  the  personal  impulse  from  the  dominating 
desire  of  the  more  prominent  citizens  of  the 
time  to  link  up  their  families  with  a  distin- 
guished genealogy.  Hesiod  had  favored  the 
Greek  gods  by  providing  them  with  a  respectable 
ancestrj',  and  a  similar  service  was  rendered  to 
the  nobles  by  the  logograplioi. 

2.  The  Origins  of  Greek  Historiography.— 
In  view  of  the  foregoing  sketch  of  the  intel- 
lectual _  environment  of  early  Greek  critical 
prose,  it  seems  but  in  the  natural  course  of 
events  that  the  first  Greek  historian  should  have 
been  Hecatseus  (born  550  b.c. ),  a  native  of 
Miletdy,  Ihe  birthplace  of  both  Greek  prose 
and  Greek  critical  philosophy.  His  main  signifi- 
cance lies  in  the  fact  that  he  foreshadowed  two 
sicnificaijt  developments  of  scientific  historical 
mcthod(_Hy  setting  up  truth  as  the  ideal  of  his 
statements  and  by  assuming  a  frankly  critical 
attituck  toward  the  conventional  Greek  creation 
mythsT^The  opening  paragraph  of  his  'Genealo- 
gies* ts  the  first  approximation  on  the  part  of 
any  writer  to  a  consciousness  of  the  function  of 
historical  criticism,  "What  I  write  here,"  he  said, 
"is  the  account  which  I  considered  to  be  true ; 
for  the  stories  of  the  Greeks  are  numerous,  and 
in  my  opinion  ridiculous." 

The  influences  which  had  produced  Hecata^us 
grew  more  powerful  and  the  necessary  develop- 
ments between  his  'Genealogies*  and  the  'His- 
tory* of  Herodotus  were  rapidly  consummated. 
Charon  of  Lampsacus  and  Dionysius  of  Miletus 
compiled  histories  of  Persia  during  the  middle 
of  the  5th  century  and  Scylax  of  Caryanda  pro- 
duced the  first  historical  biography.  In  the 
latter  half  of  the  5th  centur>-  Antiochus  of 
Syracuse  composed  the  first  history  devoted  to 
the  peoples  of  Greece,  and  Hcllanicus  of  Lesbos 
opened  the  way  for  Herodotus  by  the  breadth 
of  his  interests.  He  not  only  covered  the  his- 
tory of  Persia  and  Greece  from  a  broad  social 
point  of  view,  but  also  was  the  earliest  di  the 
Greek  historians  to  recognize  the  necessity  of  a 
comprehensive  system  of  chronology  and  to 
attempt  to  supply  it. 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


211 


3,  The  Systematic  Historical  Works  of 
Greek  Writers, —  The  first,  and  in  the  estimate 
of  modern  exponents  of  "Kuhurgeschichte,"  the 
greatest  of  the  systematic  Greek  historians  was 
Herodotus  of  HaUcarnassus  (c.  480-^25  B.C.). 
By  his  interest  In  geography  and  in  the  civiliza- 
tions of  the  East  he  gave  evidence  of  his  Jonic 
antecedents,  while  by  his  dominant  concern  with 
the  Athenian  democracy  he  gave  proof  of  the 
transfer  of  historical  attention  to  Hellenic  so- 
.ciety.  His  ^History'  was  a  narrative  of  Grxco- 
Asiatic  relations  and  contacts  from  the  reign 
^-of  Croesus  of  Lydia  (560-546  b.c.)  to  the  defeat 
of  the  Persian  invasion  in  478  B.C.  The  central 
theme  was  the  destruction  of  "the  forces  of 
Xerxes  by  the  Greeks.  But  his  work  was  not 
like  that  of  his  great  successor,  Thucydides,  nar- 
rowly political  and  military.  It  was  the  story 
of  the  struggle  of  two  fundamentally  opposed 
types  of  civilization,  and  to  prove  this  antag- 
,onism,  Herodotus  surveyed  the  foundations  of 
these  two  cultures  to  locate  the  deeper  causes 
of  the  conflict.  It  combined,  thus,  the  charac- 
teristics of  a  "Kulturgeschichte*  and  a  "Welt- 
geschichte,^^  though  both  were  strictly  limited  in 
point  of  time.  An  ardent  admirer  of  Athenian 
<^democracy^^  he  eulogized  Athens  and  its  tri- 
umph over  autocratic  Persian  imperialism  with 
the  epic  fervor  of  a  Bancroft.  /'vVhile  recog- 
nizing and  stating  the  fundamental  principles 
,  of.  historical  criticism,  he  often  deserted  them, 
especially  in  his  credulity  in  accepting  the  tales 
he  heard  on  his  travels.  On  the  whole,  however, 
modern  historical,  archaeological  and  ethno- 
graphic research  has  tended  to  confirm  rather 
than  to  discredit  his  statements,  and  no  subse- 
rqjicnt  historian  has  been  more  keen  or  sym- 
pathetic in  his  analysis  of  human  natur^  As 
the  scope  of  history  has  been  broaderrea  in 
recent  years  through  the  reassertion  of  the 
.  value  and  position  of  "Kulturgeschichte,^'  the 
slogan  has  come  more  and  more  to  be  "back 
to  Herodotus''  rather  than  ^"^back  to  Thucydi- 
des,'* as  was  long  so  popular. 

As  much  as  subsequent  historiography  owes 
to  Herodotus  with  respect  to  an  illustration  of 
the  proper  scope  of  history,  it  is  equaljy.  in- 
debted to  Thucydides  (c.  465-395^ b.c.)  for. con- 
tributions to  the  methodology  of  historical  rcr 
search  and  to  the  construction  of  a  coherent 
^historical  narrative.  His  theme,  the  Pelopon- 
"nesian  War  (431-404  b.c),  was  as  much  more 
narrow  and  restricted  a  field  than  that  covered 
by  Herodotus  as  the  American  Civil  War 
would  be  as  compared  with  the  evolution  of 
civilization  in  the  19th  century.  As  his  his- 
tory was  in  part  prepared  by  Thucydides  dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  conflict,  it  was  the  work 
of  a  scholarly  and  philosophic  war  correspond- 
ent-^n.  antique  Ililaire  Belloc,:;— rather  than 
^  of  the  dispassionate  historian  reconstructing  the 
events  of  a  distant  past  from  a  study  of  the 
documents.  His  sketch  of  the  rise  of  Greece 
shows,  however,  that  he  had  rare  power  in 
portraying  the  past  if  he  had  seen  fit  to  utilize 
it.  His  greatest  contribution  to  historiography 
was  in  the  field  of  criticism  and  methodology. 
He  set  forth  with  great  vigor  the  thesis  that  tlie 
permanence  and  enduring  fame  of  an  historical 
work  should  deoend  rather  upon  the  accuracy 
of  the  statements  than  upon  the  entertainment 
furnished  by  the  narrative.  Ranke,  at  the 
opening  of  the  19th  century,  did  not  state  more 
effectively  than  Thucydides  had  at  the  close  of 


the  5tih  century  b.c,  that  accuracy  of  data  was 
the  foundation  of  history.  The  second  great 
historical  canon  of  Thucydides  was  "relevance" 
of  material,  something  widely  at  variance  with 
the  long  and  numerous  digressions  of  Herodo- 
tus. To  these  should  be  added  his  ability  in  the 
mastery  of  details  and  their  subordination  to 
the  movement  of  the  whole  narrative.  In  these 
respects  Thucydides  may  rightly  be  held  to 
have  been  the  founder  of  scientific  and  critical 
history.  Finally,  while  Thucydides  has  received 
much  credit  in  this  respect  which  really  belongs 
to  Polybius,  he  was  probably  the  first  historian 
clearly  and  definitely  to  state  the  alleged 
"pragmatic"  value  of  the  writing  and  study 
of  history.  In  the  opinion  of  Thucydides, 
"the  accurate  knowledge  of  what  has  happenei' 
will  be  useful,  because,  according  to  human 
probability,  similar  things  will  happen  again." 
Though  his  writings  must  not  be  judged 
by  the  canons  of  Lamprecht's  Historical 
Institute,  the  Sorbonne  or  L'ficole  des  Cha^tes, 
they  were  not  free  from  major  defects. t^He 
was  unable  to  grasp  the  concept  of  time  arm  to 
view  his  facts  in  their  true  historical  perspec- 
tive. He  narrowed  the  field  of  history  not 
only  to  a  consideration  merely  of  contemporary 
political  phenomena,  but  even  to  the  external 
military  and  diplomatic  phases  of  political 
activity.  He  missed  the  vital  significance  of 
the  deeper  social  and  economic  forces  in  his- 
tory, a  weakness  perhaps  over-emphasized  by 
Mr.  Cornford.J  It  can  scarcelv  be  doubted, 
moreover,  that  he  carried  the  element  of 
"relevance"  too  far  and  omitted  as  much  ma- 
terial that  was  pertinent  as  Herodotus  had 
included  w^hich  was  not  germane  to  the  subject. 
Again,  he^illustrated  Carlyle's  weakness  in  his 
dramaticflnterpretation  of  events  in  terms  of 
great  personalities,  and  he  did  not  possess  the 
latter's  ability  to  portray  a  personality  in  its  en- 
tirety. 7  Lastly,  there  appeared  little  or  none 
of  Maoillon's  profound  discussion  of  the  critical 
use  of  documents;  his  sources  were  carefully 
concealed  in  order  that  the  style  of  the  narra- 
tive might  not  suffer.  One  may  agree  entirely 
with  Bury  that  ^^^e  work  of  Thucydides 
marks  the  longest  and  most  decisive  step  that 
has  ever  been  taken  by  a  single  man  towards 
making  history  what  it  is  to-day,"r  without  re- 
garding that  statement  as  an  unmixed  com- 
pliment. [Thucydides  certainly  was  influential 
in  bringing  historiography  under  the  domina- 
tion of  the  "political  fetish"  and  the  spell  of 
episodes  trom  which  it  suffered  from  classical 
times  to  the  end  of  the  19th  century,  and  from 
which  it  is  only  now  beginning  to  escapel  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that,  as  Lamprechrhas 
insisted,  historical  accuracy  means  as  much  the 
presentation  of  the  complete  analysis  of  an 
event,  p-riod  or  movement  as  it  does  the  mere 
truth  of  such  facts  as  are  narrated.  From  the 
standpoint  of  this  broader  and  more  funda- 
mental view  of  historical  accuracy  Thucydides 
will  scarcely  rank  as  superior  to  Herodotus. 
The  ardent  admirers  of  the  former  have  for- 
gotten that  scope  and  content  are  quite  as  im- 
portant in  history  as  refinement  of  the 
methodology  of   research. 

An  historian  far  inferior  to  Herodotus  or 
Thucydides  was  Xenophon  (c.  430-354  b.c). 
His  literary  ability  was  of  a  high  order,  but 
his  capacity  ror  profound  historical  analysis 
was    most    limited.     He    was    a    good    memoir 


I- 


n 


212 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


I    deep 


writer  and  his  'Anahasis'  was  one  of  the  most 
al)sorl)inK  of  Greek  memoirs.  In  his  *HcI- 
lenica'  he  attempted  to  continue  the  narrative 
of  Thucydidcs  from  411  to  362  b.c.  While 
this  work  is  most  valuable  as  an  historical 
source  for  the  period,  it  is  superficial  and  owes 
what  historical  merit  it  possesses  primarily  to 
its  imitation  of  the  inethod^ml  arrangement 
of  the  work  of  Thiu  ydides.YOn  the  whole,  it 
is  safe  to  agree  with  Bury*thai  he  owes  his 
reputation  to  trhe  fact  that  an  uncritical  genera- 
tion later  preserved  his  writings,  while  allow- 
ing more  meritorious  works  to  perish  and  that 
"if  he  had  lived  in  modem  days,  he  would 
have  been  a  high-class  journalist  and 
pamphleteer  and  Nyould  have  made  his  fortune 
as  a  war-correspondcni,^^  It  would  not  he  fair, 
however,  to  overlook  the  remarkable  versatility 
of  Xenophon's  literary  talents,  which  were  ex- 
hibited in  memoirs,  biography,  systematic  his- 
tory, constitutional  analysis  and  economic 
theory. 

The  last  of  the  major  Greek  historians  was 
Polybius  (c.  198-117  h.c).  From  the  stand- 
point of  either  productivity  or  profundity  he 
was  superior  to  Thucydidcs  andTjvas  'fully 
equal  to  him  with  respect  to  accurar>-  of  state- 
ment, but  his  style  being  labored  and  diffuse  he 
has  been  less  popular  than  his  two  great  prede- 
cessors/JHis  'History*  was  a  vast  work  in  40 
books*'fl?aling  witl"  the  expansion  of  the  Roman 
Empire  to  146  B.C.  As  Herodotus  had  mir- 
rored the  interest  of  early  Greek  historians  in 
the  East,  and  Thucydidcs  had  written  of 
Athens  at  the  height  of  its  civilization,  so 
Polybius  testified  to  the  decline  of  Hellas  and 
the  shifting  of  interest  to  the  new  empire  of  the 
West.  His  scholarship  was  equal  to  that  of  the 
great  historian  of  British  expansion,  but  he 
lacked  the  latter's  power  of  compression  and 
lucid  statement.  In  the  12th  book  of  his  work 
is  found,  as  a  critique  of  the  antiquarian, 
Timaeus,  the  first  great  treatise  on  the 
methodology  of  scientific  history.  Conceived 
independently  of  Thucydidcs,  this  discussion 
has  scarcely  been  surpassed,  and  his  impartial- 
ity is  a  model  for  all  historians.  Especially 
^teworthy  was  his  Ritter-like  insistence  upon 
the  valueof  a  knowledge  of  topography  to  the 
fifstorianrTHe  intended  his  history  to  be  in- 
tensely pragmatic  —  to  be  "philosophy  teaching 
by  example,"  but  he  never  allowed  the  philos- 
opher in  him  to  overcome  the  historian.  Greatly 
interested  in  the  problem  of  causation,  he  went 
deeper  in  his  analysis  of  impersonal  causes  than 
cydides,  though  his  interpretation  was 
cal  rather  than  economic  and  social.  The 
Tollowing  brief  qtioLation  from  his  12th  book 
admirably  epitomizes  his  views  as  to  the  scope, 
methods  and  purpose  of  history.  "The  science 
of  history  is  three-fold:  first,  the  dealing  with 
writteii  documents  and  the  arrangement  of  the 
material  thus  obtained ;  second,  top<:)graphy,  the 
appearance  of  cities  and  locali'ties,  the  descrip- 
tion of  rivers  and  harbors,  and,  speaking  gen- 
erally, the  peculiar  features  of  the  seas  and 
countries  and  their  relative  distances;  thirdly, 
political  affairs.  .  .  .  The  special  province 
of  hisloi-y  is,  first,  to  ascertain  what  the  actual 
words  used  were;  and  secondly,  to  learn  why 
it  was  that  a  particular  policy  or  arrangement 
failed  or  succeeded.  For  a  bare  statement  of 
an  occurrence  is  interesting  indeed,  but  not  in- 
structive; but  when  this  is  supplemented  by  a 


statement  of  cause,  the  study  of  history  be- 
comes fruitful.  For  it  is  by  applying  analogies 
to  our  own  circumstances  that  we  get  the 
means  and  basis  for  calculating  the  future;  and 
for  learning  from  the  past  when  to  act  wi/th 
caution,  and  when  with  greater  boldness,  in  the 
present.'^  All  in  all,  one  may  agree  with  Pro- 
fessor Botsford  that  "a  careful  reading  of  this 
author  is  the  l>csl  possible  introduction  to  the 
spirit  and  method  of  history  as  we  of  to-day 
regard  it." 

4.  Minor  Contributions  to  Greek  His- 
toriography.—  Polybius  was  unique  in  his  age 
as  an  historian.  Long  l)etore  he  composed  his 
great  work  Hellenic  historiography  had  begun 
to  decline  from  the  standard  set  by  Thucydidcs 
and  was  brought  under  the  influence  of  rlietoric 
in  the  4th  century.  With  their  tendency  to  in- 
sipid moralizing,  the  interpolation  of  florid 
speeches,  and  their  "passion  for  panegyrics,* 
the  historical  works  of  the  rhetorical  school, 
like  those  of  Froissart  and  Lamartine  "ex- 
hibited artistic  but  not  historical  genius." 
This  capitulation  to  the  popular  demand  for 
rhetoric  Hermann  Peter  believes  to  have  been 
the  main  cause  for  the  decline  and  stagnation 
of  Greek  history  and  its  Roman  imitations.  Of 
the  "Rhetoricians"  of  the  4th  century  the  leader 
was  Isocrates  and  the  chief  historians  of  the 
school  were  Ephorus  and  Theopompus.  The 
work  of  Ephorus  was  probably  the  nearest  ap- 
proach in  Greek  historiography  to  a  "national 
history"  of  Hellas.  Of  quite  a  different  char- 
acter was  the  work  of  Timaeus  of  Tauromenium 
who  devoted  a  lifetime  of  labor  to  the  patient 
compilation  of  a  vast  repository  of  reliable 
facts  concerning  the  history  of  Sicily  and  Italy. 
He  was  the  first  and  the  greatest  of  the  anti- 
quarians that  flourished  in  the  3d  century  and 
he  may  be  regarded  as  the  prototype  of 
Blondus  and  Mabillon.  Two  later  ambitious 
compilations  —  the  '  Weltgeschichte'  of  Dio- 
dorus  of  Sicily  (c.  90-21  b.c.)  and  the  Roman 
history  of  his  younger  contemporary',  Dionysius 
of  Halicarnassus,  were  of  a  far  inferior 
order,  though,  perhaps,  superior  to  the  work 
of  the  "Rhetoricians." 

Historical  biography  among  the  Greeks  was 
founded  by  Isocrates,  the  leader  of  the 
"Rhetoricians,"  and  one  of  the  earliest  products 
was  the  biography  of  Agesilaus  by  Xenophon. 
Subsequent  historians  devoted  considerable 
space  to  biography.  Plutarch's  (c.  50-123 
A.D. )  polished  'Parallel  Lives*  have  remained 
[at  the  head  of  the  world's  biographical  product 
on  account  of  their  compelling  interest,  if  not 
for  their  entire  historical  accurac>^^^  Indeed,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Plutarch  was  a  mor- 
alist and  wrote  his  "Lives"  not  as  strictly  his- 
torical biographies,  but  in  order  to  furnish  con- 
crete illustrations  of  his  ethical  principles  for 
the  moral   edification  of  his  readers. 

In  the  period  of  the  Hellenic  revival  in 
Rome  a  number  of  Greek  historians  made  con- 
tributions to  historical  writing  of  widely  dif- 
ferent merit.  Among  the  less  notable  produc- 
tions were  the  'Anabasis  of  Alexander'  by  Ar- 
rian  (c.  95-175  A.n.)  and  the  'History  of  Ronie' 
by  Appian,  in  the  same  period.  Far  superior 
to  these  were  the  incisive  'Historv  of  Rome' 
of  Dio  Cassius  (c.  155-240  .ah.),  and  the  broadly 
conceived  history  of  the  later  Roman  empire, 
in  its  social  as  well  as  its  political  conditions, 
bv  Ammianus  Marcellinus  (c.  330-401  a.d.),  the 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


213 


last  of  the  long  and  honorable  list  of  Greek 
historians  who,  curiously  enough,  wrote  his 
work  in  Latin. 

V.  Roman  Historiography. 

Rome  added  no  original  contributions  to 
historiography.  As  in  all  other  phases  of  its 
culture,  Rome  here  followed  the  model  set  up 
by  the  Greeks.  While  there  were  distinguished 
Roman  historians,  none  equalled  Thucydides 
or  Polybius  for  careful  adherence  to  critical 
method  and  only  Livy  and  Tacitus  approached 
the  best  of  the  stylists  among  Greek  historians. 

The  immediate  dependence  of  the  Roman 
historiography  on  the  Greek  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  down  to  the  2d  century  B.C.  all  the 
Roman  historical  literature  was  even  written 
in  Greek.  These  early  historical  works  in 
Greek  were  chiefly  ^Annals*  of  which  the  first 
and  most  famous  were  those  of  Fabius  Pictor 
(c.  250  B.C.).  The  first  Roman  historical  litera- 
ture in  Latin  was  the'T'jOrigines^  of  Cato  the 
Censor  (c.  234-149  B.c.Tpm  which  he  narrated 
the  history  of  Rome  interpreted  according  t^r 
his  notorious  bucolic  and  aristocratic  prejudicesj 
The  first  real  historian  among  the  Romans  m 
point  of  time  was  that  leader  of  all  Romans  in 
ablity,  Julius  Caesar  (100-44  B.C.).  Generally 
accurate  and  always  clear,  forceful  and  direct 
in  his  style,  Caesar's  apologies  for  his  public 
career  —  the  ^Commentaries^  and  the  ^Civil 
War>  were  the  best  historical  memoirs  produced 
in  the  ancient  world  and  rank  well  with  those 
of  any  period.  A  more  systematic  historian 
was  Sallust  (c.  86-34  b.c.)  the  Roman  disciple 
of  Thucydides.  His  chief  work,  a  history  of 
Rome  from  78  to  67. B.C.  has  never  been  re- 
covered, but  from  his  monographs  on  the 
^Conspiracy  of  Catiline*  and  the  ^Jugurthine 
War>  one  can  appreciate  his  vigorous  and 
graphic  style  and  his  power  in  the  analysis  of 
personalites  and  social  forces,  but  he  was  not 
able  wholly  to  conceal  his  pessimism  with  re- 
gard to  the  future  of  the  Roman  state  in  the 
last  years  of  the  Republic.  The  great  national 
history  of  Rome  was  that  of  Livy  (59  B.C.-17 
A.D.).V|ljis  work  was  a  massive  epic  of  the 
growtPT^f  the  Roman  world-state.  While  he 
had  a  general  appreciation  of  the  value  of 
accuracy  of  statement,  he  subordinated  this 
element  to  that  of  perfection  of  style,  and  the 
Greek  ^'RhetoriQians*'  rather  than  Thucydides 
were  his  model/lThe  great  literary  merit  of 
Livy's  history7~Tts  ministry  to  the  national 
vanity  of  the  Romans  and  their  cult  of  modern 
admirers,  and  its  great  popularity  with  the 
humanists  have  given  it  a  position  in  his- 
toriography higher  than  its  purely  historical 
value  would  warrant.  A  less  successful  ex- 
ample of  the  Roman  historical  writing  of  the 
rhetorical  school  was  the  history  of  Rome 
under  the  early  empire  by  Velleius  Paterculus 
in  the  period  of  Tibeirius.  The  last  of  the 
major  Roman  historians  was  Tacitus  (c.  55- 
120  A.D.).  Like  Polybius,  he  was  a"  man  of 
action,  and,  being  an  ardent  admirer  of  the 
aristocratic  Republic,  his  view  of  contemporary 
Roman  society  \\ps,  even  more  pessimistic  than 
that  of  Sallust.)  While  he  wrote  with  great 
vigor,  had  rare  power  of  portra3''ing  personali- 
ties and  was  generally  accurate,  the  subjective 
moralizing  element  in  his  writings,  while  add- 
ing to  their  literarv  renutation,  greatly  reduced 
their  historical  value.    fTo  him  and  to  Juvenal 


V  renutatioi 
ue.jTo  hit 


is  primarily  due  that  notorious  and  venerable 
myth  of  the  "moral  causes"  for  the  decline  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  which  was  later  revived 
and  elaborated  with  such  deplorable  results  by 
Kingsley.  In  addition  to  his  purely  historical 
works  —  the  ^Annals,*  the  ^Histories'  and  the 
biography  of  Agricola,  dealing  with  Roman  his- 
tory in  the  1st  century  of  the  Christian 
era,  the  ^Germaraia*  was  one  of  the  earliest 
excursions  into  the  field  of  descriptive  soci- 
ology. Being  the  only  extensive  source  of 
information  regarding  the  institutions  of  the 
Germans  of  that  time,  the  *Germania"  has  ac- 
quired a  great  importance  in  later  years.  It 
has  been  the  most  controverted  historical  docu- 
ment in  existence,  excepting  only  the  Penta- 
teuch and  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  Recovered  in 
the  period  of  the  humanists  and  brought  before 
the  learned  public  by  Poggio,  Enoc  of  Ascoli, 
and  Conrad  Celtis,  it  has  been  the  centre  of  his- 
torical conflict  between  the  modern  Teutonist 
and  Galilean  historians,  as  much  as  Alsace- 
Lorraine  has  been  the  pivotal  point  in  the  polit- 
ical and  military  rivalry  of  their  respective 
national  States.  More  than  this,  the  tendency 
of  Tacitus  to  idealize  the  early  Germans  at  the 
expense  of  the  Romans  originated  that  humor- 
ous but  disastrous  perversion  of  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  "invasions"  which  culminated  in  the 
vagaries  of  Charles  Kingsley's  "The  Roman 
and  the  Teuton."  The  last  Roman  historian  of 
any  repute,  unless  it  be  the  vague  figure  that 
Kornemann  has  endeavored  to  reconstruct,  was 
Suetonius  (75-160  .A.D.),  the  erudite  secretary  of 
Hadrian.  His  dTffuse  ^Lives  of  the  Caesars,' 
while  reliable  in  its  description  of  public  affairs, 
was  one  of  the  earliest  examples  of_  historical 
"muckraking''  and  "scandal  mongering."  His 
chief  significance  in  historiography  Hes  in  the 
fact  that  he  became  the  model  in  style  and 
arrangement  for  the  historical  biography  of 
the  period  of  humanism.^  Thougia  the  Roman 
historians  were  not  original  and  were  always 
more  or  less  under  the  spell  of  the  Greek 
"Rhetoricians,"  Roman  historiography  was 
incomparably  higher  in  the  sphere  of  reliability 
than  the  type  wliich  was  to  succeed  it  and 
was  to  bring  historical  writing  back  under 
the  spell  of  mythology  and  religious  prejudices 
from  which  it  had  escaped  with  Hecataeus  of 
Miletus  eight  centuries  earlier. 

VI.  Patristic  Historiography. 
1.  The  Christian  Synthesis  of  the  History 
of  the  Past. —  One  of  the  most  effective  agen- 
cies in  allaying  suspicion  and  attracting  con- 
verts to  a  movement  is  the  ability  to  point  to  a 
glorious  past.  The  Christians  felt  this  keenly, 
and,  having  adopted  the  sacred  books  of  the 
Jews  as  the  official  record  of  their  antecedents, 
they  were  faced  with  the  immediate  and  press- 
ing necessity  of  giving  to  ancient  Hebrew  his- 
tory a  prestige  which  it  had  entirely  lacked  in 
the  works  of  pagan  historians,  who  had  assigned 
to  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people  only  that 
slender  allotment  of  space  and  attention  to 
which  their  inconspicuous  political  history  had 
entitled  them.  Therefore,  the  two  world  his- 
tories, which  had  already  been  produced  by  Dio- 
dorus  Siculus  and  Pompeius  Trogus,  and  which 
were  immensely  superior  to  any  universal  his- 
tory compiled  by  Patristic  historians,  were  ut- 
terly unsuited  to  the  requirements  of  Christian 


814 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


propaganda.  Neither  was  the  yeiieral  Jewish 
history  of  Josephiis  acceptable,  fur,  while  it 
exaggerated  tremendously  the  jolc  of  the  Jews, 

~it  was  distinctly  aniagoiii^lic  u:  the  Christians. 

I  Therefore,  the  Christian  "literau"  set  about  to 
produce  a  synthesis  of  the  past  which  would 
give  due  weight  to  the  alleged  glories  of  He- 
brew antitjuily  and  wduUI,  at  :lie  same  time, 
show  why  the  Jews  were  no  hjnger  worthy  of 
their  heritage,  which  had  now  passed  to  the 
Christiansl/frhc  fir-,t  writer  to  essay  the  task 
was  ScxTus  Julius  Africanus  (c.  lSl)-250)  whi 
composed  a  history  of  the  world  in  live  books 
bringing  the  stoiy  to  221  ad.  In  this  lie  tried 
to  harmonize  and  synchronize  Hebrew  and 
Christian  history  with  that  of  the  four  great 
successive  pagan  monarchies  —  the  Assyrian, 
Persian,  Macedonian  and  Roman.  This  was 
carried  further  in  the  *  Chronicle*  of  Eusebius 
(c.  260-340),  and  Jerome  was  able  to  find  scrip- 
tural sanction  for  this  synthesis  in  the  prophecy 
contained  in  the  last  chapters  of  Daniel.  "That 
long  history,"  says  Professor  Burr,  "which  was 
now  their  preamble  was  the  sacred  story  of  the 
chosen  people,  with  its  Jacob's  ladder  forever 
linking  earth  to  heaven.  The  central  actor  was 
Jehovah,  now  the  God  of  all  the  earth.  About 
that  story  and  its  culmination  all  other  history 
must  now  fall  into  place ;  and  from  the  sacred 
record  —  for  the  record  too  is  sacred  —  may 
be  learned  the  plans  of  the  Omnipotent.  It  was 
Jerome  who  now  found  them  in  the  interpreta- 
tions and  the  visions  of  Daniel  —  in  the  image 
with  head  of  gold  and  belly  of  brass,  in  the  four 
great  beasts  that  came  up  out  of  the  sea  — 
and  from  his  day  on  almost  to  ours  the  chang- 
ing empires  of  earth  have  Jjeen  forced  to  find 
a  .place  within  that  scheme.  .Whatever  in  non- 
sacred  annals  was  found  in  conflict  with  Holy 
Writ  must  be  discarded. ^Vhat  was  left  must 
be  adjusted  to  its  worS^.  Man's  career  on 
earth  became  a  fall.  Nor  might  human  wit 
exalt  itself :  Pythagoras  and  Plato  had  learned 
from  Moses;  Seneca  from  Paul.'^_jrhe  Chris- 
tian synthesis  received  its  great  philosophic 
statement  aad  defense  in  Augustine's  *City  of 
God'  (426). ^t  was  finally  systematized  in  the 
grotesque  tHTt  fiery  < Seven  Books  of  Histoiy 
directed  against  the  Pagans*  (417)  of  Orosiiis, 
which  was  the  standard  text  on  universal  his- 
tory- until  the  revival  of  the  appreciation  of 
pagan  culture  with  the  advent  of  "Humanism,® 
when  it  was  riddled  by  the  scholarship  of  Fla- 
vins Blondus  (1388-1463)  and  was  superseded 
bv  the  'Enneades'  of  Sabelljcus  (1436-1506), 
the  humanist  affempt  at  a  universal  history. 

An  important  part  of  the  Christian  synthe- 
sis was  the  synchronizing  of  the  events  in  the 
history  of  the  Gentile  and  Hebrew  nations  and 
the  establishment  of  an  official  Christian  chro- 
nology. The  initial  step  was  taken  in  this  proc- 
ess by  Julius  Africanus  in  his  'Chronographia.' 
In  this,  the  period  of  the  creation  was  set  as 
having  occurred  5499  years  before  Christ,  and 
subsequent  events  in  world  history  were  dated 
through  an  ingenious  combination  of  the  various 
syslc-ms  of  chronology  used  by  the  different 
nations,  Eu^bius  expanded  the  work  of  Afri- 
canus in  his  famous  'Chronicle,*  in  which  he 
epitomized  universal  history  in  a  set  of  parallel 
synoptic  and  synchronous  chronological  tables 
giving  the  rcicrns  of  the  rulers  of  the  "four 
great  monarchies'*  synchronized  with  the  events 


of  Hebrew  history.  "In  these  tables,"  says 
President  White,  "Moses,  Joshua  and  Bacchus, 
—  Deborah,  Orjiheus  and  the  Amazons, —  Abi- 
melech,  the  Sphinx,  and  Oedipus,  appear  to- 
gether as  personages  equally  real,  and  their 
positions  in  chronology  equally  ascertained.*' 
The  chronology  of  Eusebius  was  adopted  by 
Jerome  in  his  'Chronicle,'  and  in  Jerome's  ver- 
sion it  became  the  authoritative  Christian 
chronology  until  it  was  slightly  revised  by  Scal- 
iger  in  1.S.S3  and  Usher  in  1650.  It  entered  sys- 
tematic church  history  in  the  'Hisloria  Tripar- 
tita* of  Cassiodorus  and  was  the  introduction 
to  every  authentic  mediaeval  chronicle. 
On  this  Christian  synthesis  of  world  history, 
asute  from  the  artificiality  of  its  chronology 
and  synchronisms,  two  characteristics  are  note- 
worthy, namely,  the  absurd  relative  importance 
attached  to  Hebrew  history  and  the  serious 
bias  against  pagan  civilization  which  made 
an  objective  historical  narrative  absolutely 
impossible>70f  the  former  tendency  Pro- 
fessor ItGbinson  has  said,  "this  theological 
unity  of  history  was  won  at  a  tremendous 
sacrifice  of  all  secular  perspective  and 
accuracy.  The  Amorites  were  invested  with 
an  importance  denied  the  Carthaginians. 
Enoch  and  Lot  loomed  large  in  an  age  which 
scarcely  knew  Pericles.**  It  is  a  curious  but 
incontestabk  fact  that  the  Jewish  nation 
owes  its  prominence  in  world  history,  to 
these  distortions  of  the  early  Christian  histo- 
rians. Always  on  the  defensive  in  the  Patris- 
tic period,  the  churchmen  were  compelled  to 
answer  the  charge  of  having  been  the  cause  of 
the  calamities  which  came  to  the  Roman  Empire 
in  the  4th  and  5th  centuries.  The  calamities 
could  not  be  denied,  and  so  the  only  procedure 
possible  was  to  prove  a  greater  prevalence  of 
misery  before  the  Christian  era.  "This  was  par- 
ticularly the  task  assigned  by  Augustine  to  Oto- 
sius  and  performed  with  great  thoroughness  in 
the  latter's  above  mentioned  work.  Deliberately 
shutting  his  eyes  to  all  the  cultural  contribu- 
tions of  antiquity,  he  gathered  a  veritable  "his- 
toria  calamitatum**  by  combing  pagan  histor>'  to 
present  an  unrelieved  picture  "of  all  the  most 
signal  horrors  of  war,  pestilence  and  famine, 
of  the  fearful  devastation  of  earthquakes  and 
innundations,  the  destruction  wrought  by  fiery 
eruptions,  by  lightning  and  hail,  and  the  awful 
misery  due  to  crime."  "All  the  achievements  of 
Egypt,  Greece  and  Rome,**  says  a  leading  his-  t 
torian,  "itended  to  sink  out  of  sight  in  the  mind 
of  Augustine's  disciple,  Orosius,  only  the  woes 
of  a  devil-worshipping  heathendom  lingered.** 
W^hen  one  remembers  that  this  work  was  almost 
the  sole  source  of  information  during  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  regarding  the  history  of  pagan  an- 
tiquity, it  is  little  wonder  that  Blondus  could 
remark  in  the  15th  centur^^  that  since  Orosius 
there  had  been  no  histor>'.  Yet.  in  spite  of  the 
external  and  conscious  bias  of  the  "Fathers® 
against  pagan  culture,  they_  could  not  escape 
the  unconscious  sources  of  influence  springing 
out  of  their  environment  of  paganism.  Thus, 
by  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  it  came  about  that 
the  classical  culture  they  assumed  to  abhor 
actually  influenced  their  cosmic  and  historical 
philosophv  as  much,  if  not  more,  than  the  cul- 
tural traditions  of  Judaism.  The  "Fathers" 
used  the  classical  languages  and  were  always 
under  the  spell  of  classical  rhetoric;  many  of 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


215 


them  were  educated  as  pagans;  their  syncretic 
theology  was  deeply  colored  with  pagan  ele- 
m^ents;  and  their  political  ideals  and  practices 
were  so  thoroughly  modelled  after  those  of  the 
Roman  Empire  that  Professor  Burr  has  very 
aptly  described  the  origins  of  the  Christian 
ecclesiastical  polity  as  ^^the  rise  of  the  new 
Rome."  This  much  is  evident  from  such 
sources  of  information  as  have  been  preserved. 
If  the  great  mass  of  early  Christian  historical 
writing  which  has  been  lost  were  available  for 
study  it  might  well  be  that  an  even  greater 
amount  of  infiltration  of  pagan  culture  could 
be  detected. 

2.  The  Christian  Philosophy  of  History.— 
Almost  as  wide  as  the  break  with  the  classical 
historiography  with  respect  to  the  status  of 
pagan  culture  was  the  difference  in  the  great 
emphasis  placed  pn  pragmatism  and  teleology 
in  the  Patristic  historical  literature!  To  the 
early  Christian  historiaris  the  "process  of  his- 
tory* had  a  real  significance  and  meaning,  it 
was  a  part  of  a  greater  cosmic  process  in  which 
God  and  man  were  the  chief  participants.  "The 
Christians  were  perhaps  the  first  to  suspect  a 
real  grandeur  in  history,*  says  Professor  Rob- 
inson, "for  to  them  it  became  a  divine  epic, 
stretching  far  back  to  the  creation  'of  man  and 
forward  to  the  final  separation  of  good  and 
eyil  in  a  last  magnificent  and  decisive  crisis.* 

E^is  Christian  philosophy  of  history,  which  has 
been  so  felicitously  termed  by  Santayana  the 
"Christian  Epic,*  was  gradually  evolved  by  the 
"Fathers*  and  received  its  final  and  decisive 
systepi^tic  expression  in  Augustine's  'City  of 
God.M  This  philosophy,  drawn  more  from  Per- 
sian "and  Hellenic  than  from  Hebrew  sources, 
considered  the  historic  process  as  a  part  —  the 
consequential  portion  —  of  a'  great  cosmic 
struggle  between  the  forces  of  good  and  eviL 
In  its  earthly  and  historical  significance  this 
conflict  was  a  struggle  between  the  City  of 
God  —  the  community  of  the  elect  believers  in 
the  Hebrew  and  Christian  God  —  and  the  City  uf 
Satan  —  the  collective  name  of  the  previous  and 
contemporary  adherents  to  paganism.  Its  final 
outcome  was  to  issue  in  the  glorious  triumph 
of  the  former  and  the  utter  destruction  and 
discomfiture  of  the  latter.  With  such  a  philo- 
sophical background  it  is  not  ditBcult  to  under- 
stand that  Christian  historiography  was  prag- 
matic to  a  degree  not  dreamed  of  by  either 
Polybius  or  Dionysius ;  it  was  "philosophy 
teaching  'by  example*  with  a  real  vengeance. 
With  such  issues  at  stake  the  most  insignificant 
event  could  not  fail  to  have  its  vital  import. 
This  "epic,*  which  received  its  philosophical 
exposition  from  Augustine,  was  illustrated  from 
history  by  Orosius  and  was  given  an  elegant 
literary  form  in  the  ^Chronica'  of  Sulpiciu-; 
Severus  (363-423). 

3.  Historical  Method  in  the  Patristic 
Period.-VThe  Christian  historians  also  departed 
widely  ffOm  the  canons  of  historical  method 
laid  down  by  Thucydides  and  Polybius.  In 
addition  to  their  tremendous  bias  against  pagan- 
ism, which  made  objectivity  out  of  the  ques- 
tion, it  was  necessary  to  devise  a  s£ecial  method 
for  handling  "inspired*  documents^  To  assume 
towards  the  Hebrew  creation  taTe?  the  critical 
attitude  that  Hecataeus  maintained  toward  the 
Greek  mythology  would  have  been  impious  and 
sinful.     Therefore,  if  the  obvious  content  of  the 


inspired  statement  was  preposterous  and  unbe- 
lievable, some  hidden  or  inner  meaning  must  be 
found,  and,  in  response  to  this  necessity,  alle- 
gory and  symbolism  replaced  candor  and  critic^L, 
analysis  as  the  foundations  of  historical  methodT/ 
"Not  even  Holy  Writ,*  says  Professor  Burr, 
"was  prized  for  the  poor  literal  facts  of  history, 
but  for  those  deeper  meanings,  allegorical, 
moral,  anagogical,  mystical,  to  be  discerned 
beneath  them.*  The  allegorical  method  of  in- 
terpreting the  Old  Testament  had  been  intro- 
duced by  the  Alexandrian  Jew,  Philo  Judaeus, 
and  appeared  in  early  Christian  writings  in  the 
Book  of  Revelations,  in  "The  Epistle  of  Barna- 
bas* and  in  "The  Shepherd  of  Hermas.*  Its 
main  early  impulse  among  the  Fathers  came 
from  Origen  (186-255).  According  to  Origen, 
says  Conybeare,  "Whenever  we  meet  with  such 
useless,  nay  impossible,  incidents  and  precepts 
as  these,  we  must  discard  a  literal  interpretation 
and  consider  of  what  moral  interpretation  they 
are  capable,  with  what  higher  and  mysterious 
meaning  they  are  fraught,  what  deeper  truths 
they  were  intended  symbolically  and  in  alle- 
gory to  shadow  forth.  The  divine  wisdom  has 
of  set  purpose  contrived  these  little  traps  and 
stumbling  blocks  in  order  to  cry  halt  to  our 
slavish  historical  linderstanding  of  the  text,  by 
inserting  in  its  midst  sundry  things  that  are 
impossible  and  unsuitable.  The  Holy  Spirit  so 
waylays  us  in  order  that  we  may  be  driven  by 
passages  which  taken  in  their  prima  facie  sense 
cannot  be  true  or  useful,  to  search  for  the  ulte- 
rior truth,  and  seek  in  the  Scriptures  which  we 
believe  to  be  inspired  by  God  a  meaning  wor- 
thy of  him.^^  T^his  allegorizing  tendency,  which 
vaulted  oveir-eriticism,  was  almost  universally 
accepted  by  the  "Fathers^^nd  received  its  clas- 
sical expression  in  the  ^Moralia,^  or  ^Commen- 
tary on  the  Book  of  Job,^  of  Gregory  the  Great 
(540-604),  and  the  ^Allegoriae  quaedam  sacrae 
Scripturae^  of  Isadore  of  Seville  (d.  636), 
which  gave  in  chronological  order  the  allegorical 
significance  of  all  the  persons  mentioned  in  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments.  These  became  stand- 
ard mediaeval  manuals  on  allegory?7 

Another  element  which  enteretftrtto  the  his- 
torical attitude  and  methodology  of  the  Patris- 
tic period  was(^eoplatonismJ  With  its  thesis 
of  the  superiority  of  the  emotions  and  intuition 
to  reason  and  intellect  and  its  advocacy  of  "un- 
bounded credulity,*  it  fitted  in  admirably  with 
the  Patristic  mental  reactions  and  became  an 
integral  part  of  the  psychic  complex  of  the 
Patristic  and  rnediaeval  historians  and  philoso- 
phers. Augustine  flirted  with  it  in  his  youth 
and  it  loomed  large  in  his  later  philosophy.  Its 
great  mediaeval  impulse  came  mainly  from  the 
philosophical  and  literary  activities  of  Erigena. 
^'long  with  the  allegorizing  tendency  tt  served 
To  make  quite  impossible  any  sceptical  and  crit- 
ical attitude  towards  the  sources  of  historical 
knowledge'."] 

Not  only  were  these  two  standards  for  the 
use  and  imerpretation  of  historical  documents 
erected,  .'^  but  there  were  also  delimited  two 
sharply  Itefined  field^^s  of  history,  the  sacred  and 
the  profane,  -the  first  relating^p  religious  and 
the  latter  to  secular  activitiesj  It  is  needless 
to  remark  that  an  incomparaBly  greater  im- 
portance was  attached  to  sacred  history  and  that 
the  working  of  a  miracle  was  considered  much 
more  significant  than  the  making  of  a  constitu- 


316 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


tion.  The  '•^Fathcrs,"  were  willing  to  devote  the 
most  extended  hihur  to  the  allegorical  explana- 
tion of  dubious  and  contradictory  blalemenis  in' 
scripture,  hut  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  one 
gathering  and  analyzing  the  conlcnts  of  158 
ooiistit'uiiuns.  It  is  only  fair  to  state,  however, 
that  the  evident  decline  ul  historical  scholarship 
in  the  Patristic  period  cannot  be  wholly  as- 
signed to  the  Christian  attitude  towards  his- 
torical data  and  problems.  Though  there  wore 
the  reasons  enumerated  above  why  the  Chris- 
tian historiography  was  bound  to  be  less  sound 
than  its  pagan  counterpart,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  period  of  the  "Later  Roman  Empire^* 
was  one  of  general  iiuellectual  dtT.line,  and  the 
lapse  of  the  ideals  of  the  height  of  classical 
culture  affected  pagan,  as  well  as  Christian, 
writers. 

4.  Systematic  Ecclesiastical  History  in  the 
Patristic  Period. —  The  most  creditable  per- 
formances in  the  realm  of  Patristic  historiog- 
raphy were  achieved  in  the  field  of  syste- 
matic history  of  the  Christian  Church.  Though 
the  'Weltanschauung'  of  the  writers  marred 
their  perspective  and  warped  their  interpreta- 
tion, the  resulting  damage  to  historical  scholar- 
ship was  least  in  this  department.  While  the 
anti-pagan  bias,  the  lust  for  the  miraculous,  the 
pious  credulity  of  the  writers  and  the  Christian 
philosophy  of  history  were  all  in  evidence,  the 
very  nature  of  the  subject  made  their  operation 
less  disastrous  here  than  in  the  synthesis  of  the 
history  of  antiquity;  attention  was  centered; 
almost  entirely  upon  ecclesiastical  matters  and 
the  writers  dealt  in  a  large  degree  with  their 
co-religionists  of  the  immediate  past  who 
scarcely  received  the  reverence  accorded  to  per- 
sonages who  had  figured  in  scriptural  events  — 
the  Church  Fathers,  like  the  makers  of  the 
American  constitution,  were  not  always  canon- 
ized by  their  own  generation^ 

The  earliest  semi-narrative  sources  of  the 
history  of  the  foundations  of  Christianity  are 
to  be  found  in  the  *  Epistles'  of  the  1st  century 
and  in  the  'Synoptic  Gospels,'  written  probably 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century.  Of  the 
former,  the  most  important,  naturally,  are  those 
of  Paul,  the  great^organizing  missionary  and 
theologian  of  the  early  Church.  Of  the  Gos- 
pels, the  earliest  and  most  reliable  is  the 
straight-forward  narrative  of  Mark,  written 
about  70  A. II.  The  'Acts  of  the  Apostles,'  the 
remaining  canonical  historical  workof  the  Apos- 
tolic period,  was  written  by  the  author  of  Luke 
about  100  A.D.  The  "Apologists"  of  the  2d  and 
3d  centuries  are  also  valuable  sources  of  infor- 
mation, though  their  writings  were  highly  con- 
troversial. The  first,  and  the  most  erudite  and 
scholarly  systematic  ecclesiastical  history  of  the 
Patristic  period  was  the  work  of  Eusebius  of 
Cacsarca  (c.  260-340).  His  'History  of  the 
Christian  Church,'  which,  in  10  books,  brought 
the  story  to  324,  was  a  work  of  massive  erudi- 
tion and  relatively  high  impartiality,  but  was 
compiled  without  literary  skill  and  was  most 
superficial  in  its  analysis  of  the  underlying; 
causes  of  the  great  social  and  religious  move- 
ments. Though  he  was  not  a  profound  thinker, 
Eusebius  was  a  real  scholar  and  the  literature 
he  examined  in  the  execution  of  his  work  was 
enormous,  ^fany  of  the  most  important  docu- 
ments he  usi  '1  were  copied  in  cxtcti'so  in  his 
history;  this  niakcs  the  work  a  most  valuable 
source  book  which  contains  the  only  extant  por- 


tions of  some  highly  important  early  Christian 
writings.  A  vast  gulf  exists  between  the  level 
of  the  histories  of  Eusebius  and  Orosius. 

The  'History'  of  Eusebius  was  continued  by 
the  historians  Socrates,  Sozomen  and  Theodoret 
in  the  5th  century.  The  whole  was  combined 
and  translated  into  l^alin  under  the  direction 
of  Cassiodorus  (477-570)  in  the  6th  century, 
and  the  narrative  was  continued  to  518.  This 
product  of  Cassiodorus  and  his  disciples,  known 
as  theT'Hisioria  tripartita,'  was  the  general 
manuarT)f  church  history  throughout  the  middle 
ages.  Though  confused,  inc(jherent,  inaccurate, 
and  annalistic,  it  was  certainly  superior  to  the 
oompanio^i  text-lxjok  on  secular  history  by 
Orosius.  |he  greatest  defect  in  the  early 
Church  TiHtories  was  their  failure  to  analyze 
the  deeper  forces  and  the  more  significant 
events  in  the  great  religious  movement  which 
they  were  describing.  This  was  due  in  part  to 
the  belief  that  Christianity  was  being  advanced 
through  divine  favor  and  in  part  to  the  fact 
that  the  writers  all  'Succumbed  to  the  tempta- 
tion to  treat  primarily  of  wonders,  miracles, 
martyrs  and  saintsj 

Christian  biograpny  was  founded  by  Jerome's 
*De  viris  illustril)us,'  a  brief  sketch  of  the  lives 
of  all  who  had  contributed  to  the  body  of  Chris- 
tian literature,  and  by  the  biographies  of  the 
earlier  saints  and  hermits.  Jerome's  work  was 
continued  by  Gennadius  (c.  495),  a  priest  of 
Marseilles,  and  by  Isadore  of  Seville  in  w'orks 
of  the  same  title.  Isadore's  compilation  was,  in 
turn,  supplemented  by  that  of  Ildcphonsus  of 
Toledo  (d.  667),  and  the  process  of  addition 
continued  ithrough  the  mediseval  period  to  cul- 
minate in  the  collection  of  963  biographies  in 
the  *  Liber  scriptorum  ecclesiasticorum'  of 
Johannes  Tritbemiuis  (1462-1516),  abbot  of 
Sponheim.  The  astonishing  credulity  of  even 
tlie  most  learned  of  these  early  biographers, 
and  their  zeal  for  ^^mlracle-mongering'^  can 
best  be  appreciated  by  a  perusal  of  such  a  work 
as  Jerome's  'Life  of  Paul  the  First  Hermit^ 
or  Athanasius'    ^Life  of  Saint  Anthony.^ 

VII.  Historical  Literature  in  the  Middle 
Ages. 
1.  Its  Relation  to  Patristic  Antecedents. — 
It  will  be  evident  from  the  foregoing  discussio'n 
that  Orosius  and  Cassidorus  w^ere  the  standard 
historical  authorities  for  the  Middle  Ages  and 
that  there  was  no  break  with  the  Patristic 
philosophy  of  history  or  historical  methods. 
"The  Middle  Ages,'^  says  Professor  Burr,  "did 
not  dissever  history  and  theology.  Nay  to  for- 
bid it  there  grew  to  completeness  that  con- 
summate preserver  of  the  unity  of  thought,  the 
procedure  against  heresy.  And  to  the  end  of 
that  long  age  of  faith  history  did  not  escape  t^e 
paternal  eye."  The  chief  representatives  of  his- 
toriography in  the  Middle  Ages,  as  of  other 
phases  of  mediaeval  culture,  were  churchmen  of 
one  sort  or  another.  The  same  zeal  for  the 
miraculous  and  diabolical  and  disregard  of  such 
non-essential  "commonplaces"  as  the  foundation 
and  disruption  of  states  and  epoch-making  po- 
litical, economic  and  social  movements  still  per- 
sisted unimpaired.  The  "Christian  Epic"  kept 
its  prestige  unshattered  and  almost  unchallenged 
for  14  centuries,  disturbed  only  slightly  by  the 
13th  century  "revival,"  the  growth  of  humanism 
and  the  controversies  of  the  Reformation  period. 
It  never  received  its  first  staggering  blow  until. 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


217 


in    the    18th   centur>',    the    English   and   French 
"Deists"  and  «Philosophes»  revealed  its  weak- 
nesses and  inconsistencies  by  their  penetrating 
and  disconcerting  criticism.     If  anything,  in  at 
least_  the  first  centuries   after    the  close  of  the 
Patristic  period,  t'here  was  a  decline  in. scholar- 
ship.    The  mediaeval  writers  not  only  retained 
th-e  Patristic  defects  but  added  to  them  the  ab- 
sence  of   the   great   erudition   of   many   of   the 
"Fathers*  and  the  presence  of  those  crudities 
incident  to  a  recent  emergence  from  barbarism. 
This  assimilation  of  the  Patristic  outlook  and 
methodology    and    its    adaptation    to    mediaeval 
capacities  was  primarily  the  work  of  Rhabanus 
Maurus  (776-856),  his  pupil  and  disciple,  Wala- 
frid  Slfabo   (c.  809-^849)  and  John  Scotus  Eri- 
gena   (d.  877).     Heinrich  von  Sybel  thus  sum- 
marizes    the     outstanding     characteristics     of 
mediaeval    histoftogra-phy    in    a   manner    which 
brings  out  clearly  its  close  relation  to  Patristic 
historical    literature:     H^'his    period  . possessed 
no    idea   of   historical   judgment,    no   sense    of 
historical  reality,  no  trace  of  critical  reflection. 
The  principle  of  authority,  ruling  without  limi- 
tation   in    the    religious    domain,    defended    all 
tradition,   as  well  as   traditional   dogma.     Men 
were  eveiywhere  more  inclined  to  believe  than 
to    examine,    everywhere    iipagination   had    the 
upper    hand    of    reason.    fNo    distinction    was 
made  between  ideal  and  real,  between  poetical 
and  historical  truth.  ;  Heroic  poems  -were  con- 
sidered a  true   and'tofty  form   of  history  and 
history    was    everj^where    displaced    by    epics, 
legends    or   poetical    fiction    of    some   kind.     A 
course    of    slow    historical    development    was 
traced  back   to    a  single  great    deed,   a    single 
personal  cause.    Almost  no  one  scrupled  to  give 
to  existing  conditions  the  sanction  of  venerable 
age  by  means  of  fabricated  history  or  forged 
documents.     TTlie    question    whether    the    as- 
cribed derivation  was  true  interested  no  one; 
it  was   enough  if   the  result  harmonized  with 
existing  rights,  dominating  interests  and  prev- 
alent beliefs.* 

2.  Mediaeval  Annals  and  Chronicles. —  An 
excellent  illustration  of  the  primitive  nature  of 
mediccval  culture  is  the  fact  that  during  the 
first  centuries  the  main  form  of  historical  writ- 
ings was  the  ^Annals'  which  had  been  common 
in  early  Eg\'pt  and  Bab^donia.  The  mediaeval 
example  of  this  type  of  historical  writing  origi- 
nated in  the  early  Carolingian  period  as  an  in- 
cident of  the  mediaeval  desire  to  locate  the 
exact  occurrence  of  Easter.  The  absence  of  a 
general  knowledge  of  astronomy  and  chronology 
made  it  necessary  for  the  more  learned  church- 
men to  prepare  and  distribute  to  monks  and- 
priests  Easter  tables  giving  the  dates  upon  which 
Easter  would  occur  for  many  years  in  advance. 
An  almost  universal  practice  arose  of  indicating 
on  the  margin  opposite  each  year,  the  event, 
which,  in  the  mind  of  the  recorder,  seemed  to 
make  that  year  mast  significant  in  the  history 
of  the  locality.  LNot  only  were  these  early 
annals  very  scanty  m  the  information  they  con- 
tained, on  account  of  mentioning  only  one  or 
two  conspicuous  events  which  occurred  during 
the  year,  but  they  were  rendered  still  less  valu- 
able because  the  mediaeval  annalist  frequently 
considered  most  important  some  insignificant 
avowed  miracle  or  the  transfer  of  the  bones  of 
a  saint,  information  of  little  or  no  value  to  the 
modern  investigator"}  In  time,  however,  entries 
were   more   frequdit   and  the  interests   of  the 


annalist  grew  wider,  until  the  annals  became, 
with  such  a  work  as  Roger  of  Hoveden's  'An- 
nals of  English  History, >  in  the  early  13th  cen- 
tury, a  valuable  record  of  the  development  of 
a  nation. 

The  origin  and  development  of  the  <  Chron- 
icle^ was  immediately  related  to  the  growth  of 
the  annals.  The  annals  were  primarily  a  yearly 
record  set  down  by  a  contemporary-  The 
chronicle  was  more  comprehensive.  TTt  normally 
consisted  in  the  summarizing  of  th^  history  of 
a  considerable  period  on  the  basis  of  one  or 
more  sets  of  annals,  preserving^^^the  chronolog- 
ical arrangement  of  the  annals/J  Many  of  the 
events  transcribed  by  the  chronMer  might  have 
occurred  before  his  period  and  he  might  com- 
bine the  records  contained  in  several  annals  in 
order  to  obtain  a  more  complete  and  compre-  ^ 
hensive  story.  To  this  compilation  of  annals 
was  usually  added,  as  an  introduction,  Jerome's 
translation  of  Eusebius'  '  Chronicle,  >  which 
linked  up  the  local  chronicle  with  the  Christian 
synthesis  of  world  history  from  the  beginning 
of  creation.  With  the  expansion  of  the  basic 
annals  in  scope  and  pertinence,  the  chronicles 
became  more  and  more  an  approximation  to  a 
history,  until  in  the  < Anglo  Saxon  Chronicle,' 
the  'Chronicle'  of  Hermann  of  Reichenau 
(d.  1054),  the  'Universal  Chronicle'  of  Ekke- 
hard  of  Aurach  in  the  earlv  12th  centurv,  the 
'Chrorficle'  of  Otto  of  Freising  (d.  1158)  and 
the  'Greater  Chronicle'  of  Matthew  of  Paris 
(d.  1259)  this  characteristic  vehicle  of  mediaeval 
historiography  became  one  of  the  most  thorough 
and  reliable  sources  of  information  available  in 
that  age. 

The  following  were  the  most  important  of 
the_  mediaeval  annals.  For  the  Carolingian 
period  the  'Greater  Annals  of  Lorsch'  and  their 
continuation  to  829  in  the  'Rojal  Annals,'  the 
'Annals  of  Fulda',and  the  excellent  'Annals  of 
Saint  Bertin'  and  'Saint  Vaast,'  coming  down 
to  the  beginning  of  the  10th  century,  are  the 
most  valuable.  The  most  important  annals  deal- 
ing with  early  French  history  are  those  of 
Flodoard  (d.  966).  For  English  mediaeval  his- 
tory there  is  the  above  mentioned  work  of 
Roger  of  Hoveden  coming  down  to  1201.  For 
mediaeval  Germany  the  great  annalistic  sources 
are  the  elegantly  written  but  prejudiced  'Annals 
of  Lambert  of  Hersfeld,'  covering  the  period 
to  1077,  and  the  more  valuable  'Greater  Annals 
of  Cologne,'  wliich  come  to  1237. 

The  chronicles  dealing  with  mediaeval  Ger- 
man history  begin  with  those  of  Fredegarius  *" 
the  Schoolmaster  in  the  7th  century  and  of 
Regino  of  Priim^'in  the  10th,  and  include  the 
authoritative  'Chronicle'  of  Hermann  of 
Reichenau  (d.  1054),  Ekkehard  of  Aurach's 
'Universal  Chronicle,'  compiled  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  12th  century  and  the  most  com- 
prehensive of  all  mediaeval  chronicles,  the 
'Chronicle'  of  Otto  of  Freising  (d.  1158),  the 
most  notable  of  12th  century  historians,  and  the 
valuable  'Chronicle'  of  Arnold  of  Liibeck 
(d.  1212).  For  France  the  more  famous  chron- 
icles arc  the  'Chronicle  of  Nantes,'  ctiming  to 
1049,  those  of  Hugh  of  Flavigny  and  Sige- 
hert  of  Gemhloux  in  the  12th  century  and  of 
William  of  Nangis  at  the  beginning  of  the  14th 
century.  The  'Chronicles'  of  Froissart  (1373  ff) 
are  attractive  but  highly  colored  and  prejudiced 
and  they  illustrate  to  some  extent  the  transition 
from  the  mediaeval  chronicle  to  the  historical 


218 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


narrative.  Fur  I'.iiKlaiid  tlic  great  media'val 
chronicles  arc  the  'Angl' '-Saxon  Clironidc,' 
dcscriliing  cvtnts  to  1154;  Roger  of  Wcndovcr's 
'Flowers  of  History,*  coming  down  to  1235, 
and  their  continuation  to  125'^  in  Matthew  of 
Paris'  'Greater  Chronicle.*  From  Italy  is  the 
valnahlc  and  voluminous  'Florentine  Chronicle' 
of  Giovanni  Villani,  dealing  with  events  to 
1348. 

3.  Attempts  at  Systematic  History.— The 
efforts  lo  produci'  >^omelhiiig  like  a  systematic 
historical  treatise  during  the  mcdia-val  period 
varied  greatly  in  their  success.  Their  nature 
was,  on  the  whole,  closely  correlated  with  the 
changes  in  the  general  level  of  culture.  The 
earliest  were  usually  slovenly  and  labored  in 
style,  sadly  inaccurate  in  grammar  and  entirely 
^  credulous  and  uncritical  in  method.  In  the 
latter  part  of  the  period,  however,  the  level  of 
scholarship  was  raised,  and  in  tlic  works  of 
such  an  historian  as  Otto  of  Freising,  in  the 
middle  of  the  12th  century,  one  mect5  for  fhe 
first  "lime  with  an  author  who  will  compare 
favorably  with  the  second-rate  figures  in  classical 
historiography.  [IDn  the  whole,  there  were  few 
attempts  at  a  general  or  international  history  of 
a  period,  and  the  histories  chiefly "  concerned 
local  or  national  events  and  movements  or  the 
deeds  of  a  conspicuous  national  monarcir\, 

The  following  w^ere  the  more  inT^ortant 
works  dealing  with  German  history  from  the 
period  of  the  "Invasions.**  The  first  of  these, 
and  the  earliest  product  of  mediaeval  historiog- 
raphy, was  the  'Ten  Books  of  Frankish  His- 
"  tory*  of  Gregory  of  Tours  (540-594),  vvhich  is 
the  main  source  of  information  regarding  the 
origin  of  the  Merovingian  dynasty.  It  was 
naive,  credulous  and  prejudiced  against  the 
Goths,  but  was  an  exceedingly  straightforward 
and  human  document,  and  was  based,  to  a 
considerable  degree,  on  Gregory's  direct  ob- 
servations. The  Lombards  found  their  national 
V  historian  in  Paul  tlie  Deacon  (725-800),  an 
erudite  member  of  the  group  of  scholars  at 
the  court  of  Charlemagne.  His  'History  of  the 
Lombards*  was  greatly  superior  to  Gregory's 
work  with  respect  to  both  accuracy  and  style. 
The  first  layman  to  produce  an  historical  work 
in  the  mediaeval  period  was  Niijiard,  whose 
'Four  Books  of  History*  present  an  able  and 
lucid  narrative  of  the  civil  wars  among  the 
grandsons  of  Charlemagne  and  offer  one  of 
the  few  examples  of  vivid  secular  interests  on 
the  part  of  a  mediaeval  historian.  The  Saxon 
emperors  had  as  their  dynastic  historian  the 
monk  Widukind,  whose  'Deeds  of  the  Saxons* 
gave  an  able  survey  of  the  reigns  of  Henry  I 
and  Otto  »he  Great.  A  more  penetrating  ac- 
count of  the  culture  of  this  period  is  found  in 
the  'Book  of  Retribution,'  the  'History  of 
Otto*  and  the  'Legatio'  of  Liutprandt  of  Cre- 
mona (d.  973).  The  finest  products  of  mediaeval 
German  historiography  from  the  standpoint  of 
style,  accuracy  and  philosophic  grasp  were  the 
'Deeds  of  tlie  Emperor  Frederick  the  First' 
and  the  above  mentioned  'Chronicle*  of  Bishop 
Otto  of  Freising  (c.  1114-58).  While  his  lack, 
of  any  scientific  canons  of  criticism,  his  revival 
of  the  Aii;,'ustine-Orosius  philo.sophv  of  hi'^tory 
in  his  'Chronicle*  and  his  bias  in  favor  of  his 
royal  patron  all  combined  to  prevent  his  rank- 
ing with,  the  greatest  historians  of  classical 
antiquitv,  [his  work  illustrates  the  highest  point 
to    whichV-tfte    strictly    mediaeval    German    his- 


tt)riograi)l)y  attained^  The  eminent  authority, 
Wegcle.  says  of  the  work  of  Otto:  "A  waiter 
possessing  such  extraordinary  literary  talent 
as  Otto  of  Freising  did  not  appear  again  in 
Ciermnn  history  for  many  a  century.  However 
much  Lambert  of  Hersfeld  may  have  excelled 
him  as  a  polished  narrator.  Otto  more  than 
made  up  for  this  by  the  deep  seriousness  of  his 
world-philosopJiy  and  the  loftiness  of  the  view- 
point which  he  invariably  mainlaincd.rVVhai- 
cvcr  anyone  may  think  of  his  philosophy',  he  is 
t'he  only  mediaeval  German  historian  who  was 
able  to  grasp  in  a  philosophical  manner  the 
march  of  world-histor>-  and  who  sought  to  give 
it  a  judicious  cxpositionT^And  he  occupies  no 
less  conspicuous  a  position  as  a  narrator  of  the 
history  of  his  own  times." 

For  France,  alleged  historical  works  began 
with  the  prolix  and  highly  prejudiced  'Four  ( 
Books  of  History*  of  Richer,  who  wrote  at  the 
very  close  of  the  10th  century  and  is  almost  tlie 
sole  source  for  the  establishment  of  the 
Capctian  dynasty.  An  even  less  reliable  and  a 
thoroughly  mediaeval  work  with  the  same  title 
1/y  Raoul  Glaber  carried  the  storv  down  for  a 
half  century  further.  Somewhat  better  w^as  t'he 
'Gcsta  Dei  per  Francos'  of  Guibcrt  of  Nogent 
(1053-1124),  which  tells  the  story  of  the  First 
Crusade,  but  it  is  based  largely  on  an  earlier 
Norman  narrative  and  the  author  is  hopelessly 
confused  when  he  loses  his  guide.  In  the  12th  • 
century  a  superior  work  appeared  in  the  lively 
and  attractive  'Ecclesiastical  History'  of  Or- 
dericns  Vitalis  (1075-1142).  Something  like  a 
real  history  is  to  be  seen  in  Rigord's  (c.  1150- 
1209)  'Deeds  of  Philip  Augustus,*  in  the  prep- 
aration of  which  the  author  made  some  ele- 
mentary use  of  the  available  documents,  letters 
and  ardiives.  The  'Conquete  de  Constanti- 
nople,* by  Geoff roy  de  Villehardouin  (c.  1160- 
1213),  was  one  of  the  more  »etable  historical 
products  of  the  Middle  A.ges.\  It  was  the  firs^ 
mediaeval  historical  work  of  any  consequenoejl 
which  was  written  in  the  vernacular.  While  it--* 
was  somewhat  of  an  apology  for  Villehardouin's 
policy  in  the  Fourth  Crusade,  it  is  much  the  best 
extant  source  for  an  interpretation  of  the  real 
spirit  of  the  Crusaders.  It  was  a  straight- 
forward account,  written  in  a  vigorous  an.d 
concise  style  being  full  of  personal  touches  and 
throbbin.g  with  virile  human  interests.  The 
'Chronicles  of  France,  England,  Scotland  and 
Spain,*  originally  written  by  Froissart  (1338- 
1410),  a  14th  century  Lamartine,  about  1375, 
have  been  mentioned  above.  They  were  the 
work  of  a  poet  and  chronicler  and  were 
avow'edly  written  to  "delight  and  please"  his 
readers,  and  in  this  he  succeeded  wholly.  It  is 
episodical  history  at  its  best  for  literature  and 
near  its  worst  for  history,  though  it  is  the 
fullest  extant  source  for  the  Hundred  Years' 
War.  An  incomparably  superior  historical 
work  was  the  'Memoires*  of  Philippe  de  Corn-, 
mines  (c.  1445-1511),  dealing  with  the  period 
of  Louis  XI.  It  was  a  vigorous  narrative  ex- 
hibiting almost  all  of  the  traits  of  the  true 
historian  —  a  good  grasp  on  the  meaning  of 
events,  penetrating  analysis  of  motives,  a  de- 
scription of  contemporary  culture  and  sound 
generalizations.  Especially  did  Commines  em- 
phasize the  political  and  pragmatic  value  of 
history  and  advised  all  statesmen  and  diplo- 
mats to  "study  it  well,  for  it  holds  the  master 
key  to  all  types  of  frauds,  deceits  and  per  juried'' 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


210 


With  this  work  French  history  enters  on  the 
modern  period. 

Aside  from  the  above  mentioned  chroniclers, 
the  avowed  mediaeval  English  historians  were 
few.  The  confused  and  gloomy  description  of 
the  invasions  by  Gildas  (c.  516-570)  has  ac- 
quired an  undeserved  fame  because  of  its  being 
the  only  available  source  for  that  important 
period.  A  fine  product  of  the  lingering  classical 
"culture  in  the  north  of  Europe  is  to  be  found 
in  Bede's  (c.  672-735)  famous  < Ecclesiastical 
History  of  the  Englisli  Nation.'  The  work  of 
a  real  literary  artist  and  scholar,  it  was  a  remi- 
niscence of  a  fast  passing  culture  rather  than  a 
promise  of  a  new  era  in  historiography.  On  the 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Norman  monarchs  a  work 
of  interest  and  merit  was  *The  History  of  the 
Kings  of  England,'  by  William  of  Malmesbury 
(d.  1142).  It  is  generally  agreed  that  the  lead- 
ing English  mediaeval  historian  was  Matthew  of 
Paris  (d.  1259)  His  'Greater  Chronicle'  dealt 
with  the  troubled  times  in  the  middle  of  the  13th 
century  just  preceding  the  beginnings  of  the 
English  parliamentary  system.  The  cautious 
English  historian  and  critic,  James  Gairdner, 
thus  summarizes  the  characteristics  of  Mat- 
thew of  Paris  and  his  historical  writings :  "His 
narrative  is  plain,  straightforward  and  lucid, 
with  here  and  there  a  little  bit  of  graphic  de- 
scription, but  it  contains  nothing  that  is  highly 
coloured  or  introduced  as  a  mere  embellish- 
ment. The  whole  interest  of  the  history  arises 
simply  out  of  the  facts  th^emselves  and  the 
truthfulness  with  which  dhey  are  depicted.  The 
writer  was  far  too  much  interested  in  what  he 
had  to  tell  to  adorn  it  with  meretricious  graces. 
He  was  a  politician  who  felt  ithe  moral  signifi- 
cance of  all  that  took  place  in  his  daj',  whether 
in  England,  at  Rome,  or  in  the  distant  East; 
and  he  expresses  his  judgment  without  the 
least  reserve,  alike  on  the  acts  of  his  own 
sovereign,  of  his  countrymen,  and  of  the  court 
of  Rome.  He  is,  in  fact,  the  most  distinctly 
political  historian  with  whom  we  have  yet  had 
to  do.  He  has,  no  doubt,  his  feelings  as  a 
monk,  resenting  the  presumption,  in  some 
cases,  of  these  new  orders  of  friars,  though 
even  here  his  complaints  seem  very  fair.  But 
his  thoughts  rise  altogether  above  mere  class 
and  party  considerations.  He  is  not  so  much 
a  monk  as  an  English  politician,  and  yet  not 
English  exclusively,  but  'cosmopolitan.  His 
merits,  even  in  his  own  day,  as  a  man  of  great 
judgment  and  impartiality  seem  to  have  been 
renowned  over  Europe." 

4.  Mediaeval  Historical  Biography. —  The 
personal  prowess  of  the  great  political  and  mili- 
tary figures  in  the  Middle  Ages  made  attractive 
subjects  for  historical  biography TT)f ten  the 
monardh  subsidized  or  otherwise  savored  a 
biographer  to  ensure  a  properly  flattering  record 
of  his  deeds.  'TNeedless  to  say,  strict  impar- 
tiality was  never  observed,  and  sycophancy  often 
was  added  to  the  other  defects  of  mediaeval 
historiography.  In  addition,  the  theological 
coloring  of  all  m..  -liaeval  thought  led  the  biog- 
rapher to  represent  the  great  secular  figures  of 
the  period  as  the  chc.  en  agents  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence in  their  ageQ  Of  these  mediaeval  biog- 
raphies the  most  notable  were  <The  Life  of 
Charlemagne,'  by  Eiy  ard;  'The  Life  of  Louis 
the  Fat,'  by  Suger;  an  Toinville's  'Life  of  Saint 
Louis,'  one  of  the  poi  shed  French  historical 
works   written   in    the   vernacular.     Here   also 


belong,  almost  as  much  as  in  the  field  of  sys- 
tematic history,  the  works  of  Otto  of  Freising 
and  Rigord.  Among  these  mediaeval  biographers, 
especially  such  as  Einhard  and  Joinville,  one 
finds  some  of  the  best  examples  of  the  rare 
emergence  of  secular  interests  in  mediaeval  his- 
toriography.    X 

'  I'S^ve'ral  facts  stand  out  from  even  the  fore-] 
going  brief  survey  of  mediaeval  historiography.,' 
In  the  first  place,  like  the  most  of  classical  his-i 
toriography,  the  historical  works  of  the  Middle 
Ages  were  for  the  most  part  concerned  with 
strictly  contemporary  history.  The  treatment  : 
of  a  remote  period  was  almost  invariably  in  the  ; 
nature  of  a  rude  and  scanty  chronicle  of  events. 
In  the  second  place,  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
differentiate  sharply  between  chronicles,  syste- 
matic histories  and  biographies  on  account  of 
a  common  methodology.  Thirdly,  it  is  notice-, 
able  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  writers  were 
churchmen.  Therefore,  while  the  ecclesiastics 
cannot  be  too  severely  criticized  for  their  vitia- 
tion of  historical  methods,  it  is  well  to  remem- 
ber that  without  them  mediaeval  historical  lit- 
erature would  have  been  practically  a  blank. 
Fourthly,  it  will  readily  be  apparent  that  mediae- 
val history  was  almost  exclusively  episodical, 
there  being  almost  no  attempt  to  analyze  the 
deeper  social,  economic  and  intellectual  forces 
in  historical  development.  Finally,  one  can 
easily  discern  that,  with  the  stimulation  of  in- 
tellectual interests  during  and  following  the 
Crusades,  there  came  an  increase  in  the  volume 
of  historical  output  and  an  improvement  in  its 
quality  that  was  a  prophecy  of  a  future  recov- 
ery of  the  Idst  historical  standards  of  classical 
antiauijy^  "^ 

-•— ""X^The  Arabic  Historians  of  the  Middle 
Ages. —  The  contribution  of  the  Arabs  to 
mediaeval  culture  was  not  insignificant  in  the 
field  of  historiography,  but  only  a  few  of  the 
more  notable  Arabic  historians  can  be  men- 
tioned in  this  place.  Orosius  found  his  Ara- 
bian counterpart  in  Tabari,  (846-932),  who 
compiled  the  first  universal  history  from  the 
Mohammedan  point  of  view.  The  events  of 
history  were  adapted  to  the  creation  of  a  "Mo- 
hammedan Epic"  justif3'ing  the  triumph  of 
Islam.  History  and  ethnographj-  were  com- 
bined in  the  voluminous  works  of  Mas'udi  (d. 
966),  whose  wide  travels  carried  him  over  most 
of  Asia,  Africa  and  Europe.  Not  until,  the 
publication  of  the  histories  dealing  with  the 
discoveries  of  the  16th  century  was  there  an- 
other work  which  contained  as  much  descrip- 
tive ethnographic  material.  The  ablest  contrib- 
utor to  historical  biograplry  among  the  Arabs 
was  Ibn  Khallikan  (d.  1282),  whom  experts 
rank  with  the  best  biographers  of  classical  an- 
tiquity. The  first  Arab  historian  to  possess 
any  considerable  philosophic  grasp  upon  cause 
and  effect  in  historical  development  was  Athir 
(1160-1232).  But  far  and  away  the  ablest  and 
most  significant  figure  in  Arab  historioeraphy 
was  Ibn  Khaldun  ( 1332-1406) .f  His  import- 
ance lies  in  the  unique  feat,  foT^ftie  time,  of 
having  been  able  to  rationalize  the  subject  of 
history  and  to  reflect  upon  its  methods  and 
purposeP^At  the  outset, -in  his  'Prolegomena  I 
to  Universal  History,'  whidh  was  the  system- 
atic presentation  of  his  theoretical  views,  he 
drew  a  sharp  distinction  between  the  conven- 
tional annalistic  and  episodical  historical  writ- 


820 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


ing  of  his  time  ami  history  as  he  conceived  of 
it,  as  the  science  of  the  origin  and  development 
of  civilization.  Anticipatinj:;  Vioo  and  Turgot, 
he  comprehended  the  nature  of  the  unity  and 
continuity  of  historical  development.  In 
marked  contrast  with  the  static  or  eschatolog- 
ical  conceptions  of  contemporary  Christian  his- 
torioi^raphy  was  his  dynamic  thesis  that  the 
priKX-ss  of  historic  growth  is  subject  to  con- 
stant change  comparable  to  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual organism,  and  he  made  clear  the  co- 
operation of  psychic  and  environmental  factors 
in  this  evolution  of  civilization.  Flint  makes 
(he  following  estimate  of  the  significance  of 
his  work:  "The  first  writer  to  treat  history 
as  the  proper  object  of  a  special  science  was 
Mohammed  Ibn  Khaldun.  Whether  on  this 
account  he  is  to  be  regarded  or  not  as  the 
founder  of  the  science  of  history  is  a  ques- 
tion as  to  which  there  may  well  be  difference 
of  opinion;  but  no  candid  reader  of  his 
*  Prolegomena*  can  fail  to  admit  that  his 
claim  to  the  honor  is  more  valid  than  that  of 
any  other  author  previous  ta  Vico.'* 

VIII.    HtTMANISM     AND     HISTORIOGRAPHY. 

1.  The  Renaissance  and  Humanism.— Re- 
cent research  and  a  more  critical  examination 
of  the  intellectual  currents  of  European  his- 
tory' have  profoundly  modified  the  exaggerated 
opinions  of  Burckhardt  and  Symonds  with  re- 
gard to  the  relation  of  the  so-called  *Renais- 
sance"  to  the  development  of  European  thought. 
It  has  been  shown  that,  at  the  best,  this  period 
did  not  mark  a  direct  and  conscious  advance 
toward  modei»i  concepts,  Qiut  was  distinctly 
the  revival  of  interest  in  aii  antique  culture, 
which  was  in  many  fundamj^ntal  ways  opposed 
to  the  prcsent-dav  outlookAThis  revival  in- 
directly contributed  toward  Ine  development  of 
modern  thought  chiefly  through  its  aid  in 
breaking  up  the  ecclesiastical  ^'fixation**  of 
mediaeval  thought  and  bv  bringing  tojhe  front 
again  an  interest  in  secular  matters^  In  its 
broadest  sense  the  literary  phase  of  tHis  move- 
ment is  now  conventionally  designated  as 
^Humanism,"  meaning  by  this  not  only  a  re- 
vival of  interest  in  classical  literature,  but  also 
a  renewal  of  appreciation  for  the  broadly 
human  interests  and  outlook  of  pagan  culture. 
It  was  primarily  an  emotional  and  intellectual 
reaction  against  the  narrow  And  ascetic  atti- 
tude of  the  theologians  without  constituting 
any  real  or  conscious  revolution  in  theolog>'. 

2.  Characteristics  of  the  Historiography 
of  Humanism. —  Though  there  were  great  dif- 
ferences in  the  quality  of  the  product  of  the 
historians  of  this  period,  as,  for  instance,  be- 
tween the  works  of  a  Poggio  and  a  Guicciardini, 
certain  fundamental  characteristics  of  the  his- 
toriography of  humanism  were  sufficiently 
general  and  universal  to  justify  enumeration. 
The  reaction  of  humanism  upon  historical  writ- 
ing was  strictly  in  accordance  wUh  the  funda- 
mental aspects  of  the  movemcnt.yit  meant,  in 
the  first  place,  a  search  for  classhrtrl  texts  and 
the  comparison,  criticism  and  improvement  of 
those  recovered.  Again,  it  greatly  reduced  the 
element  of  the  miraculous  in  historical  interpre- 
tation and  lessenedthc  "emotional  thrilP*  of 
the  "Chri'^tiati  Epicl  Pagan  history  was  to 
some  extent  rc^toredTt)  the  position  from  which 
it  had  been  excluded  by  the  Christian  writers 
in  general,  and  by  Augustine  and  Orosius  in 


particular.  This  was  due  in  part  to  the  ad- 
miration of  the  humanists  for  classical  culture, 
and  in  part  to  the  fact,  thaL_4or  the  first  time 
since  the  passing  of  Romc.Va  majority  of  the 
leading  historians  were  lajTiTtn  and  practical 
men  of  alTairs  rather  than  churchmen  and 
theologians."!  Naturally,  also,  the  classical 
models  of  hilrtoriography  were  cfTective  in  lead- 
ing to  an  improvement  in  style  and,  what  was 
more  importantMo  a  greater  attention  to  politi- 
cal and  social  cvci\ts  and  forces  —  it  meant  the 
re-secularization  of  historyj^  A  powerful  im- 
pulse in  this  latter  direction^ame  from  the  be- 
ginnings of  modern  nationalism  in  the  Italian 
city-states.  Also,  the  criticism  of  literary 
texts  produced  at  least  an  elementary  sense  of 
the  value  of  a  critical  handling  of  historical 
documents.  Finally,  with  the  humanists  his- 
tory became  more  historical.  With  their  cen- 
tre of  interest  in  the  culture  of  a  period  long 
past,  historical  writing  could  no  longer  be 
limited  entirely  to  contemporary  history  or  to 
a  mere  repetition  of  the  threadbare  *Chronicle> 
of  Jerome.  In  the  large,  however,  humanism 
meant  to  historical  writing  a  great  literary  and 
cultural  improvement  but  much  less  of  an  ad- 
vance in  scientific  method  —  it  was  a  great  im- 
pulse to  history  as  literature  but  in  no  such 
degree  to  history  as  a  critical  science.  The 
canons  of  Isocrates,  Livy  and  Tacitus  rather 
than  of  Thucydides  and  Polybius,  were  the 
guide  of  humanist  historians.  Nor  did  human- 
ism bring  to  historical  writing  that  freedom 
from  subserviency  to  vested  interests  and  au- 
thority that  is  commonly  supposed. Vlt  emanci- 
pated it  to  a  large  degree  from  the'theological 
bias,  but  substituted  a  secular  restraint  which 
was  often  as  damaging  to  objectivity  and  ac- 
curacy.* \  As  Professor  Burr  has  well  stated 
the  case;  "When  the  Middle  Ages  waned,  the 
revived  study  of  the  ancients  and  the  rise  of  a 
lay  republic  of  letters  did  not  at  first,  one  must 
confess,  greatly  advance  the  freedom  of  his- 
tory. The  courtier  humanist  charged  with  a 
biography  of  his  princely  patron  or  a  history 
of  his  dynasty,  the  humanist  chancellor  com- 
sioned  by  the  city  fathers  to  write  the  history 
of  the  town,  was  perhaps  less  free  to  find  or  tell 
the  truth  than  had  been  the  churchlv  chronicler 
unhampered  by  hereditary-  lords  or  local  vanity. 
The  audience,  too,  was  humanist,  and  the  tyranny 
of  rhetoric,  never  wholly  dispelled  throughout 
the  Aliddle  A^fs,  now  reasserted  itself  with 
double  power.  jT It  was  the  humanist  historian's 
very  function  K^make  the  glories  of  his  prince 
or  of  his  city  a  vehicle  for  the  displa>KQf  the 
Latin  style  to  which  he  owed  his  postj  And 
if  history,  thus  again  an  art,  a  branch  crfnitera- 
ture,  dared  in  a  field  so  secular  to  shun  the 
mention  of  ecclesiastical  miracle  and  even  to 
forget  the  great  plan  of  salvation,  it  was  too 
often  to  borrow  from  the  ancients j,.  strange 
varnish  of  omen  and  of  prodigy-.*'  VJVhile  it 
bore  no  causal  relation  to  humanism,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  it  was  d-..ring  this  period 
that  the  printing  press  was  'Tivcnted  and  intro- 
duced into  general  u^e.  /It  gave  a  great  stimu- 
lus to  the  "making  of  booUs**  in  the  field  of  his- 
to^\^  as  in  other  branches  of  literary  cflFort.  In 
its  largest  significance  for  the  future  of  histori- 
cal science,  the  invention  (  f  printing  can  be  com- 
pared only  to  the  origi.ial  mastery  of  the  art 
of  writing.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
neither  Thucvdides,  Pr.lvbius,  Blondus,  Mabillon 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


nor  Ranke  was  as  consequential  or  indispensable 
in  making  possible  the  present  status  of  his- 
toriography as  the  inventor  of  the  art  of  print- 
ing by  movable  type,  be  he  Coster,  Gutenberg  or 
someone  yet  to  be  discovered. 

3,  The  Chief  Contributors  to  the  His- 
toriography of  Humanism. —  Aside  from  the 
scholars  whose  activity  lav  solely  in  the  search 
for  classical  texts,  the  first  important  product 
of  humanist  historiography  was  'The  Twelve 
Books  of  Florentine  History^  by '  Leonardo 
Bruni  (1369-1.444).  yn  this  and  his  lafer'^om- 
nTentanes^  are  to  be  found  nearly  all  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  historiography  of  the 
humanist  school  —  a  moderate  adherence  to  the 
canons  of  style  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
Rhetoricians,  the  opinion  that  classical  rather 
than  contemporary  culture  was  the  most  promis- 
ing field  for  historical  inspiration,  the  elimina- 
tion of  pagan  and  Christian  miracles  and  le- 
gends, and  a  primary  attention  to  the  pnactical 
analysis  of  political  events  and  activities^  The 
standards  of  Bruni  were  adopted  by  hisvene- 
tian  disciple,  MarcantonLo  Coccio  -  ( 1436-1506) , 
known  as  ^Sabelljcus.^  in  the  production  of  the 
only  serious  humanist  attempt  at  a  world  his- 
tory, his  'Enneades.^  Though  he  took  his 
chronology  from  Eusebius,  he  restored  to  the 
history  of  antiquity  some  degree  of  proportion 
in  dealing  with  the  various  nations  by  depart- 
ing from  the  almost  exclusive  concern  with 
Hebrew  history,  which  had  been  the  fashion 
for  a  millennium.  Again,  while  he  in  no  way 
foreshadowed  Voltaire,  that  he  made  some 
progress  toward  rationalism  and  criticism  may 
be  seen  from  his  placing  the  legend  of  Sam- 
son on  a  parity  with  that  of  Hercules.  The 
great  gulf  between  the  historiography  of  the 
Patristic  period  and  that  of  humanism  can  best 
be  appreciated  by  a  comparison  of  the  ^En- 
neades>  with  'The  Seven  Books  of.  History 
against  the  Pagans. >  If  Bruni  was  the  Hero- 
dotus of  humanist  historiography  and  Sabellicus 
its  Diodorus,  Poggio  (1380-1459)  was  fts 
Ephorus.  His  'Eight  Books  of  Florentine  His- 
tory^ illustrate  in  its  extreme  form  the  influence 
of  classical  rhetoric  on  humanist  historical 
literature  and  one  may  agree  with  Fueter  that 
"what  he  gained  as  a  literary  artist  he  lost  as  ' 
an  historian.'* 

Of  a  widely  different  character  from  the 
work  of  Poggio  was  that  of  the  most  distin- 
guished historical  critic  of  the  period,  Lauren- 
tius  yalla  (1407-57).  Valla's  only  systematic 
historical  work,~^The  History  of  Ferdinand  I 
of  Aragon>  was  not  conspicuously  successful. 
It  proved  the  author  to  be  a  "scandal-monger* 
rather  than  a  historian  in  the  field  of  narrative, 
though  it  may  have  been  a  slight  methodological 
advance  to  have  substituted  scandals  for  mira- 
cles. His  achievement,  for  which  he  has  re- 
ceived undue  fame  in  the  field  of  criticism,  was 
the  final  proof  of  the  forgery  of  the  'Donation 
of  Constantine,'  the  authenticity  of  which  had 
already  been  doubted  by  Cusanus  and  Bishop 
Peacock.  As  Fueter  has  clearly  shown,  Valla 
acquired  fame  by  virtue  of  the  venerable  nature 
of  the  document  he  attacked  rather  than  by 
the  skill  or  erudition  he  displayed  in  its  analysis. 
It  was  a  testimonial  to  his  courage  rather  than 
to  his  critical  powers,  which  could  be  matched 
by  several  other  humanists.  As  Emerton  has 
said,  "The  most  interesting  thing  about  the  ex- 
posure is  the  amazing  ease  of  it.     It  does  not 


prove  the  great  learning  or  cleverness  of  the 
author,  for  neither  of  these  was  needed.  The 
moment  that  the  bare  facts  were  held  up  to  the 
world  of  scholars  the  whole  tissue  of  absurd- 
ities fell  to  pieces  of  its  own  weight.*'  More 
skill  was  shown  in  his  'Duo  Tarquinii,*  an 
attack  on  Livy's  treatment  of  a  certain  phase 
of  early  Roman  history.  This  work  also 
showed  that  the  most  highly  esteemed  of  secular 
authorities  was  no  more  immune  from  critical 
examination  than  venerable  ecclesiastical  docu- 
ments. Valla's  methods  were  applied  by  his 
Venetian  contemporary,  Bejmardo  Giustiniani 
.(1408--89),  to  dissipate  theTegencIs  connected 
with  the  founding  of  Venice. 

Far  the  greatest  historical  scholar  that  Ital- 
ian humanism  produced  was  ^lavius  Blondus 
(1388-1463),  the  Timaeus  of  humanism,  who  de- 
voted  his  life  to  a  study  of  the  antiquities  of 
ancient  Rome  and  the  rise  of  the  mediaeval 
states.  His  chief  work  was  'History  since  the 
DecHne  of  the  Power  of  the  Romans,*  in  31 
books.  The  most  notable  thing  about  this 
work,  aside  from  the  careful  scholarship,  was 
the  original  attitude  that  its  author  displayed  in 
his  interpretation  of  the  significance  of  the 
mediaeval  period.  "The  novel  element  in  the 
attitude  of  Blondus,**  says  Professor  Burr,  "is 
that  instead  of  thinking  of  the  Middle  Ages  as 
the  continuous  history  of  a  Roman  Empire,  as 
mediaevals  had  been  wont  to  do,  he  left  Rome 
to  the  past  and  told  the  storv  of  the  rising 
peoples  who  supplanted  her.**  "rHe  contributed' 
more,**  says  Fueter,  "to  our  ko^rwledge  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  of  Roman  antiq^y  than 
all  the  other  humanists  combined^**  It  is 
the  best  possible  illustration  of^Tne  canons 
of  humanism  that  its  greatest  historical 
scholar  and  savant  was  never  given  formal 
recognition  or  reward  for  his  great  con- 
tribution to  scholarship,  because  he  did  not 
possess  an  elegant  literary  stjde.  In  a  more 
fundamental  sense,  perhaps,  his  work  was  given 
the  greatest  testimonial  possible,  in  that,  of  all 
products  of  the  historical  scholarship  of  the 
period,  it  was  the  most  plagiarized  for  informa- 
tion by  later  writers.  In  this  way  it  contributed 
indirectly  to  the  improvement  of  historical 
scholarship.  The  unpopularity  of  scholarship 
for  its  own  sake,  as  shown  by  the  experience 
of  Blondus,  explains  whv  he  had  but  one  true 
Italian  disciple,  Calchi  (1462-C.1516),  the  his- 
torian of  Milan.  Blondus  was  the  true  precur- 
sor of  Mabillon  and  Tillemont. 

The  humanist  Pope,  .'Eneas  Sylvius  Pic- 
cqlomjni  (1405^^),  deserves  mention  m"  a 
sicetch  oT  humanist  historiography  more  from 
the  nature  of  his  personal  career  and  the  in- 
fluence he  exerted  on  later  German  writers 
than  from  the  value  of  his  contributions  to 
systematic  history  or  to  the  improvement  of 
historical  method.  His  numerous  historical 
works,  'Commentaries  on  the  Council  of 
Basel*;  'The  History  of  Frederick  IIP;  'The 
History  of  Bohemia*  ;  'The  History  of 
Europe*  ;  'L^niA-ersal  History,*  and  'Commen- 
taries,* or  his  autobiography,  were  superficial, 
without  deep  philosophical  grasp,  fragmentary 
and  incomplete.  Contrarj"^  to  the  usual  view,  he 
did  not  even  equal  Bruni  as  an  historical  critic, 
to  say  nothing  of  Valla  and  Blondus.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  was  a  man  of  action  in  politics 
to  a  degree  scarcely  equalled  by  Polybius  or 
Tacitus.     No     contemporary     knew     more     of 


.Mi. 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


European  politics  and  culture  than  he,  and  the 
most  valuable  aspect  of  his  historical  works  is 
the  fact  that  they  arc  full  of  personal  memoirs. 
As  a  memlicr  of  the  imperial  chancery  of 
Frederick  HI  and  throu^'h  his  later  ecclesiasti- 
cal relations  with  the  empire,  his  interest  in 
German  history  and  culture  was  greater  than 
that  of  any  of  his  Italian  contemporaries.  His 
siKiiihcance  in  the  development  of  historiograph} 
rests  primarily  upon  his  works  on  German  his- 
tory and  his  influence  on  later  German  his- 
torians. In  his  history  of  Frederick  III  he 
made  large  use  of  Otto  of  Freising  and  brought 
him  to  the  attention  of  contemporaries.  His 
history  of  Bohemia  was  probably  the  first  at- 
tempt of  a  humanist  historian  to  Jjitroducc 
ethnography  into  historical  literaturetJFinally, 
his  history  of  Europe  and  his  universal  history 
sought  to  bring  out  theJ^nterrelation  between 
history .  and  geograph^\/lt  was  in  these  re- 
spects^ chiefly,  that  he  inTluenced  later  German 
historians.  Fuetcr  says  on  this  point:  «^neas 
Sylvius  was  mainly  responsil)le  for  the  later 
appearance  in  the  works  of  many  German 
humanist  historians  of  the  tendency  to  introduce 
into  works  on  history  excursions  into  the  origin 
and  growth  of  law  and  the  relations  of  geog- 
raphy to  historical  development,  to  assume  at 
least  a  semi-critical  attitude  toward  the  legends 
of  racial  origins,  and  to  display  a  boisterous 
chauvinism  in  matters  touching  the  question  of 
nationality." 

Historical  biography  among  the  humanists 
was  founded  bv  Filippo  Villani  (c.  1325-1405) 
in  his  survey  of  the  mo'st  illustrious  citizens 
of  Florence.  Always  handicapped  by  the  crude- 
ness  of  their  classical  model,  Suetonius,  the 
biographical  products  of  the  period  were  not 
as  successful  as  the  more  systematic  historical 
works.  The  only  notable  work  was  Giorgio 
Vasari's  (1511-1574)  *Lives  of  the  Mos't  Emi- 
nent Painters,  Sculptors  and  Architects.*  This 
lacks  almost  every  characteristic  of  a  good  his- 
torical work,  but  has  become  famous  because 
of  its  subject  matter  and  the  scarcity  of  other 
sources.     It  w^as  the  first  real  history  of  art. 

2T"he  transition  from  strictly  humanist  histo- 
riography to  the  beginnings  of  modern  political 
and  national  historical  writing  in  Italy  was  well 
illustrated  by  the  works  of  the  Florentine  his- 
torians, M^chiavelli  and  GuicciardimQ  The  cul- 
tural supremacy  of  Florence  at  the'  time,  and 
the  intensity  of  its  political  life,  cornbined  to 
make  it  a  particularly  favorable  environment 
to  stimulate  the  production  of  works  of  high 
value.  With  Blondus  they  valued  truth  more 
than  rhetoric,  but  they  were  saved  from  the 
former's  obscurity  and  unpopularity  by  avoid- 
ing a  labored  and  pedantic  style.  With  them 
history  became  wholly  secular  and  was  limited 
primarily  to  a  straight- forward  narrative  and 
analysis  of  political  events.  Some  attempt  also 
was  made  to  substitute  a  psychological  and 
material  theory  of  causation  for  supernatu- 
raii'^m. 

Machiayclli  (1469-1527)  was  primarily  a 
poliircaT  phifosopher  without  any  particular 
emotion  for  history  unless  it  was  utilized  in  the 
interests  r;f  political  theory.  It  is  this  tendency 
which  giv<;s  his  major  historical  work,  ^The 
History  of  Florence,'  its  distinctive  characteris- 
tics. From  the  standpoint  of  style  or  accuracy 
il  was  not  superior  to  some  other  histories  of 
the  period,  but  is  it  doubtful   if  any  previous 


historian  since  Polybius,  with  whom  Machia- 
velli  was  thoroughly  familiar,  had  exhibited  the 
power  of  grasping  the  nature  of  historical  caus- 
ation or  of  presenting  a  clear  picture  of  the 
process  of  historical  development  that  Machia- 
velli  displayed  in  his  analysis  of  the  political 
evolution  of  the  city  of  Florence.  It  was  as  a 
political  thinker  and  organizer  of  causal  factors 
that  Machiavclli  excelled,  and  not  as  an  ob- 
jecliio-  narrator  of  political  events. 

/Not  at  -all  philosophical,  but  more  truly  hi.s- 
toncal,  was  Gujcciardini  (1483-1540).  His 
'History  of  Florence'  is  one  of  the  truly  orig- 
inal works  in  historiography  in  that  the  author 
broke  almost  completely  with  both  Patristic  and 
humanist  historiography  and  even  went  beyond 
the  classical  historical  conventions  in  one  par- 
ticular, namely,  that  he  eliminated  the  introduc- 
tion of  direct  discourse  in  his  narrative^  In  his 
lucid  style,  free  from  digressions  and-trrelevant 
details,  there  was  no  trace  of  florid  rhetoric, 
and  his  primary  concern  with  contemporary  po- 
litical history  allowed  him,  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  work,  to  dispense,  to  some  extent,  with  the 
annalistic  and  strictly  chronological  arrangement 
of  the  conventional  historical  writing  of  his 
time.  He  made  no  attempt  at  philosophic  anal- 
ysis, but  devoted  himself  solely  to  a  vigorous 
and  incisive  narrative  of  events  and  a  candid 
criticism  of  men  and  policies.  "With  the  'Flor- 
entine History,'"  says  Fueter,  "there  began 
modern  analytical  historiography  and  political 
ratiocination  in  history."  Most  critics  contend 
that  with  Guicciardini's  'History  of  Florence' 
historiography  in  western  Europe  had  again  at- 
tained to  the  level  of  Thucydides  and  Polybius. 
It  had,  however,  no  influence  on  contemporary 
historiography  as  it  was  not  published  until 
1859.  From  the  standpoint  of  style  and  ar- 
rangement Guicciardini's  other  major  work, 
'The  History  of  Italy,'  was  less  original  be- 
cause here  he  compromised  with  those  rhetori- 
cal conventions  of  humanism  which  he  had  so 
rigorously  excluded  from  his  first  work.  But 
with  respect  to  its  breadth,  scope  and  original 
mode  of  approach,  thye  latter  work  was  even 
more  epoch  making. <  For  the  first  time  a  his- 
torian had  been  able  1?6T)reak  with  tradition  and 
free  himself  from  primary  concern  with  any 
particular  state  or  dynasty  and  to  devote  his 
attention  to  a  much  broader  field  — "the  history 
of  a  geographical  unity?^  This  gave  him  an 
unprecedented  opportunity  to  study  the  growth 
and  decline  of  states,  the  interaction  between 
states  in  all  the  phases  of  international  relations, 
and  the  processes  of  political  evolution.  In 
other  words,  the  subject-matter  offered  rare 
opportunities  for  the  study  of  universal  history 
reproduced  on  a  small  scale,  and,  though  Guic- 
ciardini  almost  entirely  lacked  that  philosophical 
insight  into  social  and  political  processes  that 
distinguished  Machiavelli  and  was  thereby  pre- 
vented from  making  the  first  great  study  of 
social  and  political  evolution,  the  very  novelty 
of  his  program  constituted  a  great  advance  in 
historical  method.  Few  will  deny  that  Guicciar- 
dini  reached  the  highest  level  to  which  post- 
classical  historiography  attained  until  the  time 
of  Mabillon,  but  the  great  progress  that  waS 
necessary  'before  modern  scientific  political  his- 
tory could  be  reached  is  best  appreciated  bv  a 
perusal  of  the  rather  over  severe  criticism  of 
Guicciardini  by  Ranke,  the  earliest,  but  by  no 
means  the  most  cautious  and  scholarly  of  the 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


modern  school. ^The  modern  standards  might 
more  quickly  have  been  reached  had  not  the 
Reformation  set  back  the  progress  of  historical 
writing  by  the  resurrection  of  theological  inter- 
ests and  religious  bias  and  controversy  which 
humanism  was  gradually  and  peacefully  smoth- 
eringn[Not  until  the  theological  monopoly  had 
been  "crushed  by  the  rationalism  of  the  18th  cen- 
tury and  secular  interests  had  been  reinforced 
by  the  commercial  revolution  and  the  rise  of 
modern  nations  could  any  fundamental  advance 
be  achieved. 

Outside  of  Italy,  humanism  found  many 
distinguished  converts,  and  not  the  least  of 
them  in  the  field  of  history.  In  general,  the 
conventional  canons  of  humanist  historiograph}' 
were  faithfully  followed,  though  there  were 
some  variations  introduced  as  a  result  of  chang- 
ing conditions.  As  the  movement  was  some- 
what belated  beyond  the  Alps,  it  became  com- 
plicated by  the  religious  conflicts  of  the  Refor- 
mation period  and  took  on  a  concern  with 
ecclesiastical  matters  which  was  quite  foreign 
to  the  Italians  of  the  15th  century.  Again,  the 
literary  tastes  remained  less  purely  classical, 
and,  in  the.  zeal  for  florid  rhetoric  and  sharp 
invective,]|Tacitus,  rather  than  Livy,  became  the 
model  of  many  of  the  northern  humanists  in 
the  16th  centuryT\  As  in  Italy,  so  in  the  north, 
humanist  historffal  literature  gradually  evolved 
into  the  beginnings  of  modern  political  his- 
toriography. 

The  most  scholarly  product  of  the  historiog- 
raphy of  Swiss  humanism  was  the  history  of 
Saint-Gall  by  Joachim  von  _Watt.  better  known 
as  Vadianus  (1484-1551).  He  li  generally  rated 
as  a  historian  superior  to  Blondus.  He  not 
only  rivalled  Blondus  in  textual  criticism,  but 
also  advancedj^step  further  toward  Ranke  by 
making  some  rudimentary  progress  toward  the 
internal  criticism  of  th^  tendencies  of  the  au- 
•  thors  of  the  document_£J  He  was  able,  further, 
to  combine  erudition  with  a  clear  and  vigorous 
style  and  good  grasp  upon  the  general  factors 
of  historical  development.  Fueter  regards  his 
work  as  the  most  broadly  conceived  product  of 
the  historiography  of  humanism  on  account  of 
the  wide  scope  of  the  subjects  and  interests 
embraced.  It  was,  however,  doomed  to  an  even 
longer  period  of  obscurity  than  awaited  Guicci- 
ardini's  ^History  of  Florence,*  because  it  was 
not  published  until  the  third  quarter  of  the 
19th  century. 

In  Germany  the  list  of  distinguished  human- 
ist historians  begins  with  the  name  of  Albert 
Krantz  (1450-1517),  who,  following  Aeneas 
SylvTus,  was  one  of  the  first  to  apply  the 
literary  and  historical  methods  of  humanism  to 
a  study  of  primitive  peoples,  in  his  histories  of 
the  early  Saxons  and  Wends.  More  famous 
was  Johannes  Turmair,  known  as  Aventinus 
(1477-1534).  In  hir^istory  of  Bavaria>  and 
his  ^History  of  Early  Germany*  he  tried  to 
combine  the  literary  canons  of  Bruni  with  the 
scholarshinof  Blondus,  but  fell  far  short  of 
either,  and\h|s  bitter  Protestant  bias  prevented 
any  objective  treatment  of  contemporary  affairs] 
Few  writers  of  the  period,  however,  "equalled 
him  in  his  ability  to  analyze  and  interpret  the 
manners  and  customs  of  a  people.  Ulrich  von 
Hutten  (1488-1523)  \vas  more  distinguished  for 
njs  t5Tilliant  satire  in  his  campaign  against 
bigotry  than  for  his  contributions  to  historical 


literature,  but  his  recovery  and  publication,  with 
extended  comments,  of  a  manifesto  of  Henry 
IV  against  Gregory  VII  was  both  a  shaft  of 
Protestantism  against  Rome  and  a  valuable 
addition  to  historical  knowledge.  The  only  dis- 
tinguished representative  of  the  erudite  and 
critical  tendencies  of  Blondus  among  the  Ger- 
man humanist  historians  was  Beatus  Rhenanus 
(1486-1547),  the  friend  and  disciple  of  Erasmus. 
He  examined  the  sources  of  early  German  his- 
tory with  the  same  exact  and  objective  scholar- 
ship that  Erasmus  had  applied  to  the  ecclesi- 
astical records  and  doctrines.  While  he  lacked 
the  ability  to  organize  his  work  into  a  coherent 
exposition  of  its  results,  his  labors  represent 
the  highest  level  of  scholarship  to  which  the 
historiography  of  German  humanism  attained. 
Of  all  the  publicists  who  have  a  place  in  the 
historiography  of  German  humanism,  Samuel 
.Pjii^ndorf  (1632-94)  was  the  leader  as  a  his- 
torian. His  works  included  a  ^History  of 
Sweden,*  a  ^History  of  Frederick  William  the 
Great  Elector*  and  ^An  Introduction  to  the 
History  of  the  Leading  Powers  and  States  of 
Europe.*  He  had  a  fine  classical  style,  but  ex- 
hibited to  its  fullest  extent  that  fundamental 
fault  still  common  to  publicists  when  they  enter 
the  field  of  historical  literature,  namely,  a  con- 
cern only  with  the  few  distinguished  figures  in 
international  relations  and  with  that  hitherto 
most  superficial  field  of  political  history,  the 
record  of  international  relations  when  unaccom- 
panied by  any  attention  to  internal  political  or 
social  history.  As  in  the  later  work  of  Droy- 
sen,  one  searches  in  vain  in  the  mass  of  refer- 
ences to  external  politics  for  even  the  slightest 
appreciation  of  those  deeper  popular  movements 
and  forces  of  which  diplomatic  history  can  give 
only  the  most  scanty  and  unreliable  reflection 
and  information. 

A  more  distinguished  scholar  and  publicist 
than  Pufcndorf,  but  not  so  noted  an  historian, 
was  the  Dutch  writer,  Hugo  Grotius  (1583- 
1645),  the  founder  of  modern  international  law. 
His  chief  historical  work  was  ^The  History  of 
the  Netherlands.*  Though  his  style,  in  imita- 
tion of  Tacitus,  w^as  pompous,  prolix  and  in- 
volved, he  displaj'ed  great  ability  in  psycholog- 
ical anab'sis  and  in  dissecting  the  problems  of 
military  and  political  history  connected  with 
the  struggle  between  Spain  and  the  Nether- 
lands. 

That  humanist  historiography  in  England 
was  closely  related  to  the  origins  of  that  intel- 
lectual movement  in  Italy  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
fact  that  the  first  product  of  this  U~pe  of  his- 
tdical  literature  in  England  was  the  scholarly 
and  well-written  ^History  of  England  in  the 
Reign  of  Henry  VII*  by  Polydore  Vergil 
(1470-1535),  an  Italian  ecclesiastic  who  had 
made  his  home  in  England.  His  scholarship 
was  not  matched  in  the  British  Isles  until  the 
time  of  Camden,  a  century  later.  England's 
earliest  native  humanist  historian  of  note 
was  Sir  Thomas  More  (1478-1535),  who-e  pol- 
ished style  found  expression  in  his  ^History  of 
Richard  III.*  Of  all  the  British  historians  of 
this  period,  it  is  probable  that  the  truest  repre- 
sentative of  humanism  was  the  erudite  Scot, 
George  Buchanan  (1506-82).  Few  of  the  best 
Italians  equalled  him  for  the  purity  of  his 
Latin  diction  and  the  vigor  and  clarity  of  his 
narrative,   but  his    ^  History'  of   Scotland*    was 


804 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


most  uiKiitical  and  credulous,  utterly  lacking' 
in  ratiynalistic  tendencies  and  marred  by  ,i 
narruvi(  chauvinism.  Machiavelli  and  Guicci- 
ardini  found  lluir  linglish  disciple  in  the  phi- 
l(M(bplu'r  and  stalesman,  Francis  Bacon  (1561 
I620i  His  41istury  of  the  Keign  of  Kin,; 
Henry  the  Seventh  •  was  especially  notable  for 
bold  criticism,  "judicial  severity,"  and  the  frank 
expression  of  the  author's  opinions.  The  Eng- 
lish representative  of  the  erudite  and  critical 
school  of  Blondus  was  the  court  historian,  Wil- 
liam Camden  (1531-1623),  an  avowed  admirer 
of  Polybius.  In  his  *  Annals  of  English  and 
Irish  History  in  the  Reign  of  Elizabeth'  he 
showed,  like  his  French  contemporary  Uc  Thou, 
that  the  political  history  of  the  16th  century 
could  not  be  wholly  divorced  from  ecclesiastical 
questions. 

The  transition  from  humanism  to  'modern 
political  history  in  England  was  illustrated  by 
the  works  of  Lord  Clarendon  (1609-74)  and 
Bishop  Burnet  (1643-1715).  While  the  general 
arrangement  of  Clarendon's  *  History  of  the 
Rebellion  and  Civil  Wars  in  England'  re- 
sembled the  French  "memoirs,**  and  though  it 
was  most  superficial  in  its  analysis  of  the 
fundamental  social  and  political  causes  of  the 
civil  wars,  it  is  doubtful  if  any  previous  his- 
torian, classical  or  humanist,  possessed  Claren- 
don's power  of  vivid  delineation  of  personali- 
ties. Bishop  Burnet,  in  his  'History  of  the 
Reformation  of  the  Church  of  England*  and 
'History  of  My  Own  Time,*  was  the  first  his- 
torian of  parly  intrigues  and  parliamentary  de- 
bates, a  subject  scarcely  available  for  any  pre- 
vious writer.  An  ardent  Whig  and  Anglican, 
he  belonged  more  to  the  forerunners  of  modern 
political  history  than  to  the  list  of  disciples  of 
humanism. 

Spain  contributed  three  important  figures  to 
humani.^t  historical  literature  in  Diego  Hurtado 
de  Mendoza  (1503-75),  Juan  de  Mariana  (1535- 
1625)  and  Ger6nimo  dc  Zurita  (1512-80).  While 
Mendoza  wrote  his  'History  of  the  War  with 
Granada*  in  a  pompous,  archaic  and  involved 
style,  he  equalled  Bacon  or  Guicciardini  in  his 
sharp  criticisms  and  acute  judgments.  Mariatia, 
a  Spanish  Jesuit,  was  a  writer  of  quite  a  dif- 
ferent sort.  He  has  been  called  the  Spanish 
Buchanan  by  Fueter,  and  his  'History  of 
Spain'  in  30  books  resembled  the  work  of  the 
Scot  in  its  excellent  style  and  cautious  criti- 
cisms of  Christian  legends.  His  liberal  allot- 
ment of  space  to  ecclesiastical  matters  was  a 
breach  with  humanist  conventions.  Much  less 
able  in  narration,  but  a  far  more  critical 
scholar,  was  Gcronimo  dc  Zurila,  the  historian  of 
the  kingdom  of  Aragon  and  the  most  prominent 
and  faithful  disciple  of  Blondus  among  the 
Spanish  historians  of  this  period.  He  was  espe- 
cially significant  through  the  fact  that  he  was 
one  of  the  first  historians  to  make  an  extensive 
and  fairly  critical  use  of  the  diplomatic  corre- 
spondence in  reconstructing  the  record  of  polit- 
ical events  in   the   distant   past. 

The  most  notable  product  of  the  historical 
schola'ship  of  the  French  humanists  was  the 
work  of  Joseph  Justus  Scaliger  (1540-1609)  in 
the  field  of  historical  "chronology.  His  'De 
emendatio-'c  temporum'  was  a  bold  attemnt  to 
put  chronolo^ry  on  a  scientific  basis  by  revising 
the  "sacred'  chronology  in  the  light  of  the 
evidence  from   the  history  of  the  "gentile**  and 


"pagan"  nations  of  antiquity.  His  'Thesaurus 
temporum'  was  a  most  notable  performance  of 
scholarship,  which  provided  a  general  history 
of  the  development  of  chronology  and  included 
a  most  valuable  reconstruction  of  the  lost 
'Chronicle'  of  Eusebius.  Scaliger's  publicist 
contemporary,  J^aiiBodin  (1530-'^6),  in  his 
'Methodus  ad"^  Facilem  historiarum  cogni- 
tionem,'  produced  the  first  extensive  treatise  on 
historical  method,  with  the  emphasis  on  mter- 
pretation  rather  than  upon  criticism  of  sources. 
Especially  significant  was  the  emphasis  which 
Bodin  placed  upon  the  influence  of  geographical 
factors  in  historical  development,  thus  opening 
the  way  for  Montesquieu  and  Ritter.  It  was, 
therefore,  to  a  much  greater  degree  a  fore- 
runner of  the  first  chapter  of  Buckle's  'His- 
tory of  England*  than  of  Bernhcim's  'Lehr- 
buch.*  A  widely  different  contribution  to  his- 
toriography was  contained  in  the  work  of  Jac- 
ques Auguste  de  Thou  (1553-1617),  conven- 
tionally known  as  Thuanus.  He  was  probably 
the  most  notable  French  contributor  to  the  sys- 
tematic historiography  of  humanism.  His  'His- 
toria  sui  temporis,'  designed  as  a  continuation 
of  a  work  of  the  same  title  by  the  Italian 
humanist,  Paulus  Iqvus  (1483-1552),  described 
the  civil  and  religious  wars  in  France  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  I6th  century  according  to  the 
spirit  of  an  enlightened  and  tolerant  French 
Protestant.  He  introduced  into  historiography 
the  laudable  tendencies  displayed  by  his  royal 
master  and  friend,  Henry  IV,  in  statesmanship. 
As  might  be  expected  in  the  work  of  one  of 
the  jurists  who  aided  in  drafting  the  "Edict 
of  Nantes,**  he  was  scarcely  fair  to  the  extreme 
Catholic  party,  but  his  message  was  a  lofty 
and  noble  plea  for  mutual  religious  toleration 
in  the  larger  interest^of  France.  His  work  ex- 
hibited great  powers  of  extended  intellectual 
labor  and  uniformly  maintained  a  great  dignity 
of  tone.  He  might  have  equalled  Machiavelli  . 
and  Guicciardini  if  he  had  not  reintroduced  the 
theory  of  the  divine  determination  of  political 
causation,  and  if  he  had  possessed  the  con- 
structive literary  ability  which  would  have 
enabled  him  to  organize  his  work  into  a 
coherent  narrative.  He  may  be  said,  however, 
to  have  improved  upon  them  in  one  regard, 
namely,  that  he  showed  how  essential  a  proper 
consideration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs  may  be  to 
a  thorough  understanding  of  political  and  con- 
stitutional development.  The  contributions  of 
de  Thou's  contemporary,  Isaac  CasauI)on,  will 
be  discussed  in  another  connection.  The  finest 
literary  product  of  the  historiography  of  French 
humanism  was  the  polished  '^Icmoires*  of 
Saint-Simon  (1675-1755)  dealing  with  France 
under  the  early  Bourbons. 

IX.   The   Protestant   Reform.vtion    .\nd   the 
Counter-Ri:fokm.\tion  in  HisroRior.R.M-HY. 
1.  Its  Effect  upon  the  Subject-matter  and 
the  Interpretation  of  History.—  In   the  same 
year   that   Machiavelli   received  his  commission 
to    write    his     'History    of     Plorcnce*    Luther 
burned   the   papal   bull'  at    Wittenberg   and    the 
Protestant  Reformation  was  soon  in  full  swing. 
(A  rude   shock  was  given  to   the  great   impulse 
hrf  humanism  toward  the  healthy  secularization 
of   historical   literature,  and   the  centre  of  his- 
torical   interests    was    again    forced    back    into 
the  rut  of  theological  controversies  from  which 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


225 


it  had  been  trying  to  free  i^tself  since  the  days 
of  Augustine  and  OrosiusTy  Again  to  quote 
from  Professor  Burr,  "To  tRe  freedom  of  his- 
tory there  came  a  sudden  check  with  the  great 
rehgious  reaction  we  call  the  Reformation. 
Once  more  human  affairs  sank  into  insignifi- 
cance. Less  by  far  than  that  of  the  older 
church  did  the  theology  of  Luther  or  Calvin 
accord  reality  of  worth  to  human  effort. 
Luther  valued  history,  it  is  true,  but  only  as  a 
divine  lesson ;  and  Melanchton  set  himself  to 
trace  in  it  the  hand  of  God,  adjusting  all  its 
teachings  to  the  need  of  Protestant  dogrna. 
Had  either  Papist  or  Lutheran  brought  unity 
to  Christendom,  history  again  must^have  be- 
come the  handmaid  of  theology."  |  Not  only 
were  ecclesiastical  matters,  dealingLwith  both 
dogma  and  organization,  deemed  the  all  essen- 
tial  sphere  of  historical  investigation,  but  also 


irely 
leviT? 
acea 


universal  history  was  again  regarded  as  pure 
a  great  struggle  between  God  and  the  D 
Two  new  "Cities  of  Satan,"  however,  repl 
the  pagan  "City"  of  Augustine  and  Orosius, — 
the  'Teufels  Nest  zu  Rom,*  and  the  followers 
of  "the  crazy  Monk  of  Wittenberg,"  respec- 
tively. The  struggle  was  now  limited  to  Chris- 
tendom, which  became  "a  house  divided  against 
itself.» 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  the  fact 
that  this  revival  of  the  religious  orientation  of 
historical  interest  was  as  fatal  to  the  fine  ob- 
jectivity of  Guicciardini's  type  of  historical 
product  as  it  was  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
secular  point  of  view  of  the  Florentine  school. 
iTSere  was  no  longer  any  thought  of  prosecuting 
mstorical  studies  for  the  mere  love  of  acquiring 
information  or  of  enriching  the  store  of  knowl- 
edge regarding  the  past,  a^Blondus  had  labored 
for  these  purposes  aloneTl  History  again  be- 
came as  violently  pragmattc  as  with  Augustine 
and  his  disciples.  The  past  was  viewed  merely 
as  a  vast  and  varied  "arsenal"  from  which  the 
controversialists  could  bring  unlimited  supplies 
of  ammunition  for  the  conflict  and  put  their 
enemies  to  an  inglorious  rout.  The  embryonic 
canons  of  criticism  which  had  been  in  part  re- 
stored by  the  best  of  the  humanist  historians 
were  lightly  ignored,  and  each  party  consciously 
strove  to  produce  the  most  biased  account  of 
past  events  possible,  in  order  to  exhibit  their 

opponents     in     the     most     unfavorable     light. 

y_3ources  of  information  were  not  valued  for 
their  authenticity,  but  for  their  potential  aid  in 
polemic  exercises,  and  invective  replaced  the 
calm  historical  narrative.  Finally,  it  should  be 
emphasized  that  since  the  period  of  the  Ref- 
ormation there  has  been  little  opportunity  for 
a  completely  free  and  impartial  study  of  the 
mediaeval  period.  An  epoch,  the  interpretation 
of  which  was  so  vital  to  the  two  great  re- 
ligious groups  of  Christendom,  could  scarcely 
again  become  a  field  for  calm  and  dispassionate 
analysis. 

It  would  be  inaccurate,  however,  to  hold  that 
the  Reformatiori  gave  no  impulse  to  historical 
investigation.  fNever  in  the  palmiest  days  of 
classical  or  Kijfrianist  historical  writing"  was 
there  a  more  feverish  energy  exhibited  in 
scanning  the  records  of  the  past ;  the  great  de- 
fect was  not  in  the  nature  of  a  decline  in  activ- 
ity or  interest,  but  in  the  character  of  the  im- 
pulse that  led  to  this  vigorous  quest  for  in- 
formation and  the  manner  of  use  to  which  the 
knowledge  was  put  after  it  had  been  acquired./ 

VOL.  14  —  15  '  " 


Protestant  historians  were  "aided  by  the  God 
of  Saint  Paul"  in  the  search  for  evidence  that 
would  prove  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt  that 
the  elaborate  ritual  and  body  of  dogma  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  had  been  wholly  an 
extra-scriptural  and  semi-pagan  growth,  and 
that  the  Pope  was  the  real  Anti-Christ;  and 
Catholic  investigators  were  "specially  guided  by 
the  Blessed  Virgin"  in  their  counter-demonstra- 
tion that  the  Church  and  all  its  appurtenances 
were  but  the  rich  and  perfect  fulfillment  of 
Scripture,  and  that  the  Protestants  were  in- 
viting a  most  dreadful  and  certain  punishment 
by  their  presumptuous  and  sinful  defection 
from  the  organization  founded  by  Saint  Peter 
in  direct  obedience  to  the  words  of  Christ.  The 
only  real  contributions  made  by  the  controversy 
were  the  recovery  and  publication  of  important 
early  documents  on  Church  histor}'  and  the 
production  of  telling  criticisms  by  both  factions 
which  could  be  combined  a  century  later  by 
the  rationalists  to  their  mutual  discomfiture. 

2.  The  Chief  Products  of  the  Controversial 
Period, —  The  first  serious  contribution  of  the 
Protestant  camp  was  *The  Lives  of  the  Popes 
of  Rome>  by  Robert  Barnes  (1495-1540),  an 
Anglican  Lutheran  who  had  fled  to  Germany 
for  protection.  Composed  under  Luther's  di- 
rect supervision,  it  endeavored  to  prove  the 
popes  responsible  for  all  the  disasters  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  praised  the  virtues  of  their 
secular  opponents.  At  last,  the  methods  of 
Orosius  had  been  turned  against  the  Church  . 
itself.  Much  more  important  were  the  vol*  f 
uminous  ^Magdeburg  Centuries, >  a  composite 
work  planned  and  edited  by  Matthias  Vlacich 
(1520-75),  better  known  by  his  latinized  name 
of  Flacius.  He  was  aided  by  a  number  of 
prominent  Protestant  scholars,  such  as  Aleman, 
Copus,  Wigand  and  Judex.  The  history  of  the 
Church  and  of  Christian  doctrine  was  reviewed 
by  centuries  down  to  1300  in  the  effort  to  prov? 
direct  historicity  in  the  Lutheran  position  and 
to  show  that  the  Catholic  doctrines  and  organ- 
ization had  been  an  exotic  and  unhol}^  growth 
juvay  from  the  purity  of  Apostolic  Christianity. 
jWhile  the  authors  displayed  considerable  critical 
aFility  in  dissecting  the  papal  doctrine  and 
dogmas,  they  exhibited  an  equal  gullibility  in 
accepting  preposterous  tales  to  bolster  up  their 
side  of  the  controversTrj  Its  significance  lies  / 
chiefly  in  the  fact  thaf^t  founded  Church  his-  / 
tory  in  its  modern  phase.  Another  Protestant  1 
polemic  appeared  about  this  time  in  England  ' 
and  met  with  great  popular  success.  This  was 
<The  Acts  and  Monuments  of  the  Christian 
Martyrs,*  by  the  Englishman,  John  Foxe  (1516- 
87).  Beginning  with  Wycliffe,  it  traced  the 
record  of  Protestant  martyrs  in  such  a  manner 
as  especially  to_  represent  the  struggle  as  one 
between  the  purity  and  the  perversion  of  Chris- 
tianity—  between  Christ  and  the  Anti-Christ. 
Protestantism  found  its  Scottish  champion  in 
John  Knox  (1505-72),  who  wrote  his  ^History 
of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland^  to  prove  the 
particular  solicitude  of  the  Devil  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  Catholic  cause.  In  spite  of  its 
obvious  bias,  however,  Knox's  work  was 
greatly  superior  to  that  of  the  Centurians  and 
Foxe.  From  the  standpoint  of  literary  quality, 
his  history  was  a  work  of  genius,  "displa>4ng  a 
rnarvelous  precision  and  sureness  in  the  selec- 
tion and  presentation  of  the  significant  and 
striking  details."     Nor  did  he  fail  to  condemn 


226 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


in  the  most  vigorous  terms  those  who  adopted 
Calvinism  as  a  means  of  gaining  selfish  ma- 
terial ends  or  resorted  to  violence  in  the  name 
of  religion  in  order  to  revenge  political  or 
personal  grievances.  A  work  which  can 
scarcely  be  regarded  as  a  part  of  the  campaign 
of  theological  polemic  that  is  being  described, 
but  which  calls  for  some  brief  notice  on  ac- 
count of  its  great  interest  and  significance  for 
the  history  of  the  Reformation,  is  the  "Corn- 
mentaries  on  the  Political  and  Religious  Condi- 
tions in  the  Reign  of  limperor  Charles  V"  by 
lohanncs  Philippi  (1506-66),  more  generally 
known  by  his  latinized  name  of  Sleidanus. 
JThc  great  importance  of  his  work  is  that  it 
was  the  first  political  analysis  of  the  Reforma- 
tion movement  and  the  Protestant  revolt.  He 
w^as  the  official  constitutional  apologist  of  the 
Lutheran  states  of  northern  Germany,  and  his 
task,  not  unlike  that  of  Jefferson,  was  to  justify 
at  the  bar  of  public  opinion  the  entire  legality 
of  the  secession  of  the  Protestant  princes  from 
the  Empire'  He,  therefore,  approached  the  his- 
tory of  the  movement  from  a  political  and  con- 
stitutional rather  than  a  theological  point  of 
view^IiN'hile  he  limited  himself  wholly  to 
authentic  documents,  his  work  was  the  product 
of  an  advocate;  though  not  a  polemic,  it  was 
a  lawyer's  brief  carefully  selecting  and  mar- 
shalling the  evidence  to  be  presented.  As 
might  be  expected  from  such  circumstances,  his 
"Commentaries"  exhibited  great  power  in  the 
organization  and  concentration  of  material,  an 
admirable  lucidity  of  expression  and  a  dignified 
tone,  designed  to  make  an  appeal  to  the  learned 
public  of  Europe.  While  it  contained  none  of 
Ranke's  religious  fervor  and  in  no  way 
anticipated  the  social  studies  of  Janssen,  his 
work  was  of  the  greatest  significance  as  a 
direct  foreshadowing  of  the  now  generally  ac- 
cepted thesis  of  Professor  Robinson  that  the 
Protestant  revolt  was  far  more  a  political  than 
a  religious  movement  —  that  it  looked  more 
toward  the  political  adjustments  of  the  Peace 
of  Augsburg  and  the  Treaty  of  Westphalia  than 
to  the  triumph  of  the  theology  of  "justification 
by  faith."  ITHe  anticipated  this  interpretation, 
not  only  through  the  general  mode  of  his  ap- 
proach to  the  problem,  but  also  by  specific  com- 
ments upon  tne  underlying  political  causes  of 
the  revoltT*! 

The  CStholic  counter-blast  was  initiated  by 
the  monumental  *.A.nnalcs  ecclesiastici'  of  Car- 
dinal Caesar  Baronius  (l.'>38-1607),  the  director 
of  the  Vatican  library.  By  the  use  of  an  enor- 
mous mass  of  evidence  he  tried  to  prove  the 
New  Testament  origin  of  Catholic  Christianity 
and  to  show  its  logical  development  from  Scrip- 
tural foundations.  While  he  was  more  critical 
in  his  use  of  sources  than  the  authors  of  the 
'Centuries'  and  introduced  more  unpublished 
documents,  the  work  was  purely  a  polemic  and 
marked  no  advance  in  historical  method.  In  one 
way  it  was  decidedly  a  retrogression.  As  the 
most  authoritative  critic  of  the  historiography 
of  this  period  has  clearly  shown,  Baronius  was 
mainly  re-^ponsible  for  the  introduction  into  his- 
torical CdiMroversy  of  the  method  of  shufHing, 
quibbling  a' d  evasion,  which  has  particularly 
characterized  the  Jesuit  controversialists.  He 
endeavored  to  avoid  meeting  dangerous  issues 
by  trying  to  confuse  and  obscure  the  vital  ques- 
tion through  turning  the  discussion  into  secon- 


dary and  irrelevant  channels.  The  crudities 
and  errors  in  the  work  of  Baronius  were  re- 
vealed in  the  searching  criticism  of  the  great 
humanist  scholar,  Isaac  Casaubon  (1559-1614), 
to  wliom  Baronius'  weaknesses  due  to  his  in- 
ability to  handle  Greek  were  readily  apparent. 
He  devoted  the  last  years  of  his  life  to  a  refu- 
tation of  Baronius  in  his  'Exercitationes  in 
Baronium.'  The  'Annales'  were  later  continued 
with  much  greater  scholarship  by  Odoricus 
Raynaldus  (1595-1671),  a  learned  Italian  ec- 
clesiastic. The  second  great  Catholic  cham- 
pion was  the  French  bishop,  Jacques  Benigne 
Bossuet  (1627-1704).  In  his  'History  of  the 
Differences  among  the  Protestant  Churches*  he 
endeavored  to  convince  the  Protestants  of  the 
error  of  their  ways  by  showing  them  that  there 
could  be  no  logical  end  to  sectarian  divisions 
once  the  crucial  initial  break  had  been  made 
with  ecclesiastical  authority.  P  Bossuet's  im- 
portance lies  in  the  fact  thatTTe  alone  of  the 
controversialists,  Protestant  or  Catholic,  was 
able  to  get  beneath  personalities  and  events  and 
to  view  the  conflict  in  its  deepest  philosophical 
aspects  as  a  struggle  between  liberty  and  au- 
thority, in  which  the  victory  of  liberty  meant  tg 
him  indifference,  atheism  and  religious  anan^hy^ 
In  his  'Discourse  on  Universal  History'  he  apS* 
peared  as  the  Orosius  of  the  Counter-Reforma- 
tion. Though  incomparably  more  able  and 
philosophic  than  the  'Seven  Books  against,  the 
Pagans,*  it  was  less  critical  and  less  historical 
than  the  'Enneades'  of  Sabellicus.  "His  'Dis- 
course,* **  says  Fueter,  "was  not  an  historical 
work.  It  was  merely  a  sermon  in  which  t!he 
biblical  text  was  supplanted  by  historical  sub- 
ject-matter carefully  edited  and  prepared  in  the 
interest  of  the  Church."  It  was  the  last  serious 
attempt  at  an  interpretation  of  universal  his- 
tory in  terms  of  the  old  theolog}'.  After  Vol- 
taire had  published  his  'Essai  sur  les  Moeurs* 
in  the  middle  of  the  next  centurj',  no  one  dared 
to  risk  his  reputation  by  a  revival  of  the  doc- 
trines of  Orosius  and  Bossuet. 

The  above-mentioned  works  of  controversy 
are  only  the  more  notable  ones  selected  from 
the  great  volume  of  lesser  contributions  to  the 
historical  literature  of  the  Reformation  and 
Counter-Reformation,  but  they  sufficiently  illus- 
trate the  general  tendencies  in  method  and  in- 
terpretation. It  has  not  entirely  ceased  at  the 
present  day  as  one  can  readily  perceive  by  a 
comparison  of  the  works  of  Ranke  and  Schaff 
with  those  of  Bollinger  and  Janssen.  While 
humanists  and  religious  controversialists  were 
writing,  a  new  Europe  was  being  shaped  by 
the  effects  of  the  commercial  revolution,  out  of 
which  was  to  come  modern  civilization  and 
with  it  the  birth  of  scientific  historiography. 

/  X.  The  Chief  Influences  in  the  Shaping  of 
MoDER]^  Historiography. 

1.  The  Era  of  Discoveries  and  the  "Com- 
mercial Revolution." — Inasmuch  as  history 
down  to  very  recent  times  has  been  regarded 
as  primarily  the  domain  and  province  of  the 
theologian  or  litterateur,  it  was  but  natural  that 
either  the  Reformation  or  the  Renaissance 
should  be  taken  as  marking  the  origin  of  the 
modern  phase  of  the  development  of  historiog- 
raphy. Now  that  it  has  come  to  be  generally 
conceded  that,  in  its  broadest  interpretation, 
L history  is  a  branch  of  social  science  and  related 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


227 


generically  to  the  whole  body  of  science,  it  has 
become  necessar>'  to  search  for  the  causes 
which  brought  modern  historical  writing  into 
being  in  the  results  of  that  great  period  of 
transformation  which  marks  the  beginnings  of 
the  present  social  and  intellectual  order,  namely, 
thd'^ommercial  Revolution.*^  By  this  term  is 
mraTvt  that  vast  movement  of  exploration  and 
discovery,  which  occmred  in  the  three  cen- 
turies from  1450-1 75077and  its  almost  incal- 
culable social  and  intellectual  consequences. 
The  isolation,  repetition,  stability  and  provin- 
cialism of  the  old  order  could  not  endure  in 
the  face  of  the  widespread  contact  of  different 
cultures  —  that  most  potent  of  all  forces  in 
arousing  intellectual  curiosity  and  promoting 
radical  changes  of  every  sort. 

The  reaction  of  the  commercial  revolution 
upon  historiography  was  in  no  way  more  not- 
able and  far-reaching  than  in  regard  to  the 
scope  of  the  historian's  interest.  The  narrow- 
ness and  superficiality  of  the  field  of  historical 
investigation  since  the  canons  of  Thucydides 
and  Orosius  had  come  tp  prevail  could  no  long- 
er endure  unimpaired /it  meant  the  beginning  of 
the  return  to  the  field~lhat  Herodotus  had  to 
some  extent  marked  out  for  the  historianj 
Writers  to  some  degree  ceased  to  be  absorbs 
by  those  most  superficial  phases  of  political  and 
ecclesiastical  history,  which  had  hitherto 
claimed  all  of  their  attention,  and  became  for 
the  firsts  time  interested  in  the  totality  of  civ- 
ilization, jit  meant  a  much  greater  impulse  to 
that  broatiening  and  secularizing  process  which 
had  been  revived  by  humanism.  Not  only  were 
there  great  stores  of  knowledge  to  be  obtained 
from  the  contact  with  the  older  civilizations  of 
the  East,  but  in  the  natives,  historians  and  phi- 
losophers at  last  found  the  "natural  man,*'  who 
had  hitherto  only  existed  in  the  mythical  period 
before  the  "Flood.**  No  greater  contrast  could 
be  imagined  than  the  vast  difference  in  the  type 
of  subjects  which  interested  such  an  historian 
as  Pufendorf  and  those  with  which  Oviedo  con- 
cerned himself.  Again,  the  new  range  of  his- 
torical interests  offered  some  opportunity  for 
originality  of  thought;  there  were  fewer  er- 
roneous notions  to  handicap  the  writer  at  the 
outset.  Neither  Thucydides,  Polybius  and  Livy, 
nor  Augustine  and  Aquinas  had  provided  the 
final  authoritative  opinion  on  the  marriage  cus- 
toms of  Borneo  or  the  kinship  system  of  the 
Iroquois.  The  only  exception  in  this  respect 
was  the  prevalent  doctrine  of  a  "state  of  na- 
ture,** which  had  come  down  from  the  Stoics 
and  Roman  lawyers  and  now-  seemed  to  have 
practical  concrete  confirmation. 

While  the  influence  of  the  commercial  revo- 
lution upon  historiography  was  most  effective 
indirectb',  through  the  intellectual  and  social 
changes  which  it  produced,  and  the  reaction  of 
these  changes  upon  historical  interests  and 
methods,  there  were  some  important  immedi- 
ate and  direct  results  apparent  in  historical 
writing  among  thosejiho  dealt  with  the  record 
of  the  discoveries.  I  In  the  first  place,  tliere 
were  radical  change?-in  style  and  exposition. 
The  old  arrangement  in  the  form  of  annals  was 
no  longer  suitable ;  what  was  needed  now  was  a 
vehicle  for  comprehensive  description  and  not 
for  chronological  narration.  The  majority  of 
the  early  historians  of  the  movement  of  explora- 
tion and  discovery  were  practical  men  of  af- 
fairs and  wrote  in  a  direct  and  unpretentious 


style.  Though  there  was  later,  with  such  writers 
as  Herrera,  a  tendency  to  lapse  into  the  lit- 
eral canons  of  humanism,  an  important  breach 
had  already  been  made  with  both  the  form  and 
the  sMe  of  the  conventional  historical  litera- 
ture. jTne  content  of  historical  products  was 
also  ^eatly  altered  by  these  writers;  political 
and  ecclesiastical  intrigues  were  replaced  by  a 
comprehensive  account  of  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  a  peopJigT/This  tendency  reacted  strong- 
ly even  on  those  writers 'who  dealt  exclusively 
with  European  affairs.  The  'Chronicle*  of 
Eusebius  or  the  genealogy-  of  reigning  mon- 
archs,  as  the  introduction  to  historical  works 
was  generally  displaced  by  a  description  of  the 
land  and  its  inhabitants.  Excepting  only  the 
feeble  advances  of  ^neas  Sylvius  and  his 
numerous  German  disciples,  for  the  first  time 
since  the  days  of  the  Ionic  historians  of  the  5tli 
and  6th  centuries  B.C.,  ethnography  and  geog-. 
raphy  began  to  make  a  feeble  appearance  in  his- 
toriography. Finally,  though  the  earlier  of  the 
members  of  this  school  of  writers  were  prima- 
rily collectors  of  descriptive  information,  they 
later  became  speculatiyfe,  and  with  Voltaire  and 
Herder  there  appear  attempts  at  a  world  his- 
tory conceived  according  to  the  new  orientation 
and  possessing  some  degree  of  comprehensive- 
ness and  grasp  of  causal  forces. 

As  historiography  was  completely  dominated 
by  the  canons  of  humanism  at  the  beginning  of 
the  period  of  discovery,  it  was  natural  that  the 
earliest  of  the  historians  of  the  commercial  revo- 
lution should  be  humanists  who  turned  their  at- 
tention to  the  new  movement.  Their  style  and 
arrangement  of  material,  however,  had  to  be  al- 
tered to  some  extent,  and  the  centre  of  inter- 
est was  profoundly  changed.  The  first  of  these 
writers  was^gjer  Martyr  d'Anghiera  (d.  1526), 
an  Italian  humanist  "who  devo'redHbimself  to  a 
description  of  the  new  world  which  had  just 
been  revealed.  His  lOgcades  of  the  New 
World*  showed  a  fine  power  "of  descfipfive 
composition,  which  sacrificed  humanist  conven- 
tions when  necessary.  While  exhibiting  no  pro- 
funditj-  and  little  critical  ability,  it  was  a  well- 
proportioned  and  fairly  complete  summary  of 
the  extant  reports  regarding  the  new  civiliza- 
tions. /Its  great  significance  lies  in  the  fact  that 
it  was  me  first  work  bj-  an  historian  which  de- 
scribed the  civilization  of  a  people  without 
founding  it  upon  the  narrow  and  cra.niped  basis 
of  political  life  or  religious  activitlesTT  A  more 
truly  historical  work  and  the  most  objw:tive  pro- 
duction of  the  period  was  the  'General  and  Nat- 
ural History  of  the  Indies*  of  Gonzalo  Fer- 
nandez de  Oviedo  (1478-1557),  a  Spanish  nat- 
uralist who  turned  historian  —  a  sort  of_  early  3 
Alfred  Russell  \\'aUace.._He  was  highly  critTcal 
in  reco'rdTrig  'Ins  own  observations,  but  was 
equally  credulous  in  accepting  tales  told  to  him 
by  others.  His  work  contained  a  vast  amount 
of  information  which  was  generally  reliable.  In 
his  direct  and  matter-of-fact  narrative  there  was 
nothing  of  the  form  of  humanism,  but  hi-;  style 
was  slovenly  and  the  organization  of  material 
miserable.  It  was  the  least  artistic  and  the 
most  scientific  work  of  this  early  group.  At  the 
opposite  pole  as  to  accuracy  stood  the  notorious 
work  of  the  Dominican  bishop,  Bartholomew  de 
Las  Casas  (1474-1566)— the  "William  Lloyd 
Garrison  of  the  16th  century.*'  He  was  a 
biased  and  pedantic  scholastic  doctrinaire  of  a 
thoroughly  mediaeval  type.  His  'Historj'  of  the 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


Indies,*  idealized  the  natives  without  bounds 
and  tremendously  exaggerated  the  cruelty  of 
the  conquerors.  It  was  worse  than  worthless 
for  cither  history  or  ethnography  and  did  not 
even  possess  the  merit  of  an  agreeable  style. 
Infinitely  superior  was  the  'General  History  of 
the  Indies'  of  Francisco  Lopez  dc  Gomara 
(151(>-c.l560).  the  ablest  historian  of  this 
school.  He  showed  an  admirable  combination 
of  excellent  descriptive  style  with  relatively 
high  critical  ability.  His  work  would  have  been 
the  great  history  of  the  discoveries  had  it  not 
been  vitiated  by  personal  considerations.  He 
was  employed  by  the  family  of  Cortes  and  was 
compelled  to  devote  more  space  to  the  history 
of  the  conquest  of  Mexico  than  to  all  other 
events  combined,  and  was  also  compelled  to  re- 
frain from  candid  criticism  in  this  major  por- 
tion of  his  work.  The  great  '^popular*'  history 
of  the  period  of  discovery  was  the  'General 
History  of  the  West  Indies'  of  Antonio  de 
Herrera  (1549-1625),  the  official  historian  of 
Philip  II.  This  work  was  tlie  best  example  of 
the  lapse  of  the  early  descriptive  narrative  into 
the  conventions  of  humanist  style.  He  even 
adopted  the  annalistic  arrangement  and  every- 
where subordinated  subject-matter  to  external 
form.  This  meant  that  his  work  was  greatly 
inferior  to  some  of  the  earlier  ones  in  its  de- 
scriptive material  as  well  as  in  critical  method. 
It  became  the  popular  authority  and  did  more 
than  any  other  work  to  establish  the  generally 
accepted  ideas  concerning  the  discoveries  and 
the  great  figures  connected  with  them.  Next 
to  the  work  of  Las  Casas  the  least  meritorious 
product  of  this  school  was  the  'Commentaries 
on  the  Incas,'  by  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega  (1540- 
1616),  the  son  of  a  Spanish  adventurer  by  a  na- 
tive Peruvian  mother.  He  was  honest  but  en- 
tirely destitute  of  critical  powers.  Adopting  the 
stye  of  the  humanists,  he  constructed  an  Uto- 
pian picture  of  ancient  Peru  which  was  exag- 
gerated beyond  comparison.  His  almost  worth- 
less picture  of  the  Incas  gained  great  vogue  in 
the  I7lh  and  18th  centuries  when  such  idealistic 
views  of  native  populations  were  so  popular. 
In  passing,  there  might  be  mentioned  the  bump- 
tious and  boastful  'General  History  of  Virginia 
and  New  England'  by  Capt.  John  Smith.  The 
first  work  to  deal  with  the  exploration  and 
settlement  of  India  and  the  "Far  East"  by 
Europeans  was  the  'Da  Asia,'  of  the  Portu- 
guese colonial  official  and  historian,  Joao  de 
Barros  (1496-1570).  Published  in  fragmentary 
form  in  1552,  it  described  the  Portuguese  ex- 
plorations in  Asia.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  best 
literary  product  among  the  histories  of  the 
period  of  discovery,  and,  though  somewhat 
apologetic  in  tone,  remained  for  a  long  time 
the  chief  source  of  information  on  the  subject. 
/  A  century  and  a  half  later  Engelbrecht  Kacmp- 
fer  (1651-1716)  provided  the  first  systematic 
account  of  the  early  European  contact  with 
Japan.  He  was  a  German  physician  who 
visited  Japan  and  his  manuscript  'History  of 
Japan,'  published  in  1727,  remained  the  chief 
popular  source  of  European  knowledge  re- 
garding that  country  for  a  century,  and  was 
extensivelv  used  by  Charlevoix.  The  French 
Jesuit,  Pierre  Fran<;ois  Xavier  de  Charlevoix 
(1682-1761)  not  only  compiled  histories  of  the 
Jesuit  missionary  enterprises  in  Japan  on  the 
basis  of  the  works  of  Kaempfer  and  others, 
but  also  wrote  voluminously  of  the  French  ex- 


plorations in  America  from  personal  observa- 
tion and  first  hand  contact.  His  'Histoire  et 
description  generale  de  la  Nouvelle-France' 
(1744),  though  prolix  and  uncritical,  was  highly 
interesting  and  enjoyed  a  long  popularity.  The 
general  reaction  of  the  influences  growing  out 
of  the  period  of  discoveries  and  the  commercial 
revolution  upon  this  school  of  historians  was 
best  summed  up  in  'The  Philosophical  and 
Political  History  of  the  Settlements  and  Trade 
of  Europeans  in  the  East  and  West  Indies,' 
by  the  promoter  and  pamphleteer,  Guillaume 
Thamas  Raynal  (1713-96).  Published  in  1771, 
it  was  not  only  somewhat  of  a  synthetic  com- 
pilation from  earlier  works,  but  also  indicated 
the  reaction  of  the  commercial  revolution  upon 
European  thought  by  its  emphasis  upon  the 
significance  of  commerce  in  modern  history 
and  by  its  surcharge  of  18th  century  political 
philosophy  concerning  the  rights  of  man,  lib- 
erty and  the  state  of  nature.  But  import- 
ant as  some  of  these  writers  may  have  been 
in  altering  the  conventions  of  style  and  the 
interests  of  the  historian,  the  general  effect  of 
the  commercial  revolution  upon  historiography 
was  less  vital  in  the  production  of  historians  of 
the  discoveries  than  in  the  alteration  of  all 
phases  of  life  in  the  succeeding  centuries  which 
grew  more  or  less  directly  out  of  it  and  indi- 
rectly wrought  great  changes  in  historical  con- 
cepts and  methods. 

2.  The  Reaction  of  the  New  Scientific 
Philosophy  upon  Historiography. —  None  of 
the  indirect  influences  of  the  commercial  revo- 
JLution  upon  historical  writing  were  more  im- 
/portant  and  more  obvious  than  its  aid  in  pro- 
micing  that  new  philosophy  of  nature  of  which 
Bacon  and  Descartes  were  the  most  conspicuous 
exponenJ^sTy  The  results  of  the  explorations  of 
all  the  rtrajor  ^gortions  of  the  earth's  surface 
had  not  onl^^emonstrated  the  great  extent  of 
the  habitablepDrtions  of  the  globe,  but  had  also 
shown  that  the  supposed  marvels  and  terrors  in 
the  unexplored  regions  were  but  an  unfounded 
myth  which  quite  failed  to  materiaji||7  At  the 
same  time  that  De  Gama,  Columbus  and  Ma- 
gellan were  revealing  the  extent  and  nature  of 
the  surface  of  the  globe,  less  picturesque  fig- 
ures were  devoting  themselves  to  an  explora- 
tion of  the  universe,  with  results  equally  disas- 
trous to  the  older  theological  traditions.  _  The 
vast  and  immeasurable  extent  of  the  universe 
was  apprehended  to  an  elementary  degree  by 
Copernicus,  Galileo  and  Tycho  Brahe.  The  no- 
tion of  an  orderly  arrangement  and  functioning 
of  the  universe  was  established  by  the  great 
laws  of  mechanics,  discovered  and  formulated 
by  Galileo,  Kepler  and  Newton.  To  these  ma- 
jor advances  in  science  should  be  added  the  ex- 
planation of  the  now  commonplace  natural 
phenomena  through  the  great  advances  in  every 
field  of  natural  science  in  the  I7th  century.  The 
net  result  of  all  these  notable  advances  \yas  a 
serious  challenge  to  the  old  theological  inter- 
pretations, based  primarily  upon  the  concept  of 
'a  "God  of  arbitrariness,"  who  was  continually 
varying  or  suspending  the  laws  of  the  universe 
to  punish  a  recalcitrant  prince  or  to  answer  the 
prayer  of  a  faithful  bishop. 

The  general  implications  of  the  above  scien- 
tific discoveries  were  reduced  to  a  systematic 
body  of  philosophical  thought  by  Francis  Bacon 
and  Rene  Descartes.  Bacon  especially  empha- 
sized the  necessity  of   following  the  inductive 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


method  and  Descartes  attempted  a  mechanical 
interpretation  of  the  universe.  The  new  discov- 
eries and  the  new  philosophy  tended  to  produce 
a  rationalistic  interpretation  of  natural  and  so- 
cial phenomena  which  abruptly  challenged  the 
older  and  generally  accepted  view  of  miracles 
and  wonders  that  had  been  so  popular  with 
Christian  historians  during  the  mediaeval  period. 
The  English  Deists,  such  as  Cherbury,  Blount, 
Locke,  Shaftesbury,  Woolston  and  Hume,  for- 
ever discredited  the  doctrine  of  the  miraculous. 
Finally,  with  the  attacks  upon  the  traditional 
views  of  the  composition  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  by- Hobbes,  Spinoza,  Astruc  and 
Reimarus,  itKe  philosophy  of  wonder-working 
was  underiTliTted,  not  only  through  the  evidence 
of  natural  science,  but  by  questioning  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  Scriptural  accounts  in  which 
the  miracles  were  recordeo^  The  gradual 
growth  of  toleration,  especiallyin  England,  dur- 
ing the  latter  part  of  the  I7th  century  and  the 
opening  of  the  18th  centuries  enabled  these  rev- 
olutionary ideas  to  obtain  an  adequate  expres- 
sion and  a  general  currency. 

It  was  also  inevitable  that  the  new  scientific 
discoveries  and  the  new  philosophy  of  nature 
should  react  profoundly  upon  the  contemporary 
social  philosophy.  The  idea  of  orderly  devel- 
opment and  continuity  in  social  as  well  as  nat- 
ural processes  was  comprehended  by  Vico, 
Hume  and  Turgot.  The  older  idea  of  social 
evolution  as  a  gradual  decline  or  retrogression 
from  a  primordial  ^'golden  age"  was  replaced  in 
the  writings  of  Vicq^.  Voltaire,  Hume,  Turgot, 
Kant,  Godwin  an3~Condorcet  by  the  concept  of 
continual  j)rogress  from  lower  stages  of  civil- 
ization. Vrhe  need  for  miracles  to  justify  his- 
tory and  me  other  sciences  dealing  with  human 
activities  was  lessened  by  the  growing  preva- 
lence of  the  Deists'  doctrine  of  the  inherent 
and  reasonable  ^'decency"  of  man  —  a  notion 
widely  at  variance  with  the  older  views  of  the 
"Fathers''  and  of  Calvin,  which  jriaintained  the 
hopeless  depravity  of  mankindTj  Finally,  the 
new  discoveries  and  the  secularization  of  nat- 
ural and  social  philosophy  produced  a  great  ex- 
tension of  the  interests  of  the  historian  beyond 
the  field  of  politics  and  religion.  In  the  writ- 
ings of  Voltairgj  Raynal,  Montesquieu  and  Hee- 
ren  it  became  apparent  that  the  impulse  to  a 
broader  and  sounder  scope  of  histor>'  had  be- 
gun to  affect  others  than  those  who  described 
the  course  of  the  explorations.  Though  this 
healthy  tendency  toward  a  wider  field  of  his- 
torical investigation  and  narrative  was  to  some 
extent  checked  by  the  renewed  impulse  to  poli- 
tical history  with  18th  and  19th  century  nation- 
alism, it  had  gained  a  foothold  from  which  it 
was  not  entirely  dislodged  until  it  was  over- 
whelmingly reinforced  by  the  expansion  of  in- 
terest in  social,  economic  and  intellectual  topics 
after  the  industrial  revolution  and  its  social  and 
intellectual  consequences  in  the  19th  century. 

The  reaction  of  this  philosophv  of  the  new 

natural  science  and  of  the  new  social  philosophv 

upon  historiography  appears  in  the  writings  of 

what  is  conventionally  known   as  the  <<Ration- 

alistic   School"  of   historians,   or  the  Tiistorians 

-^'     of    the    "Aufklai-ung.'"     While   the  writings   of 

\     this  school  varied  so  greatly  that  it  is  custom- 

/  \    ary  to   divide   the  writers  into   several   groups, 

there  was  a   fundamental  unity  of  method  and 

interest  which  makes  it  possible  to  summarize 

the  general  nature  of  the  rationalistic  histori- 


ography of  the  18th  century.  J^uch  the  most 
important  innovation  of  this  school  was  their 
uniform  tendency  to  broaden  the  field  of  his- 
tory, so  that  it  would  extend  beyond  the  polit- 
ical intrigues  of  church  or  state  and  embrace 
the  history  of  commerce,  itjijiistry,  and  civil- 
ization in  its  widest  aspectsTT  _  The  historians 
of  the  discoveries  had  showrT^similar  tendency, 
but  their  work  had  been  confined  to  a  discussion 
of  the  new  world  and  they  had  not  constituted 
a  general  European  school  of  historians.  With 
the  rationalists,  no  matter  what  the  period  or 
country  dealt  with,  there  was  an  effort  to  adopt 
a  broad  cultural  approach  to  history  and  to 
infuse  embryonic  sociological  principles  into 
historical  analysis.  Scarcely  less  important  was 
their  attempt  to  discredit  superstition  and  the 
theological  theories  of  historical  causation,  and 
to  substitute  for  these  purelv  natural  causes. 
Their  general  theory  of  historical  causation  was 
crude  and  elementary,  being  the  notorious  so- 
called  "catastrophic  theory  of  history,"  whereby 
great  niovemenlii  UI'  polities  are  accounted  for 
as  the  result  of  a  single  personal  act  or  of 
some  isolated  natural  or  political  event.  Being 
the  first  attempt  in  the  history  of  historiography 
to  provide  a  purely  natural  theory  of  causa- 
tion, it  was  bound  to  be  imperfect  and  unsatis- 
factorj',  but  it  was  a  great  advance  over  the 
previous  theory  of  supernatural  or  miraculoiis 
causation.  It  led,  however,  to  an  exaggerated 
emphasis  upon  the  possibility  of  abrupt  and 
artificial  changes  in  social  and  political  institu- 
tions. The  "Romanticists"  arose  primarily  as 
a  reaction  against  this  particular  phase  of  the 
historical  doctrines  of  the  rationalists.  Even 
the  political  historv  of  the  rationalists  was  given 
a  new  and  more  promising  cast.  It  was  no 
longer  limited  to  the  field  of  political  apolo- 
getics, but  became  a  truly  critical  political  his- 
tory as  far  as  its  attitude  towards  policies  was 
concerned.  It  was  not  usually  written  -by  mern- 
bers  of  the  governing  classes  nor  under  their 
patronage,  but  by  representatives  of  the  new 
bourgeoisie  or  third  estate,  who  had  little  influ- 
ence in  the  several  European  governments  at 
that  period.  It  became  an  agency  of  criticism 
and  of  agitation  for  reform  but  rarely  for  rev- 
olution. It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
the  critical  powers  of  the  rationalists  were 
limited  almost  wholly  to  their  attitude  towards 
the  general  subject-matter  of  their  history  and 
were  not  exhibited  to  any  comparable  degree  in 
their  handling  of  the  sources  of  information. 
As  research  scholars  in  the  use  and  criticism  of 
printed  and  manuscript  documents  they  did  not 
even  approximate  the  level  of  the  school  of 
Mabillon. 

The  founder  of  the  rationalistic  school  of  his- 
torians and  the  master  mind  of  the  movement 
was  Francois  Arouet,  more  commonly  known 
as  Voltaire  (1694-1778).  The  two  dominating  jm 
factors  in  Voltaire's  political  and  historical 
philosophy  were  his  great  admiration  for  the 
English  civilization  of  his  time  and  his  peer- 
less powers  as  a  critic.  An  apologist  of  an  en- 
lightened despotism  allowing  the  free  develop- 
ment of  bourgeois  culture  and  prosperity,  he 
saw  in  the  England  of  Walpole  his  political 
ideal,  and  his  agitation  for  reform  in  France 
was  limited  wholly  to  a  desire  to  create  in 
France  what  he  beheld  in  England.  As  a  critic 
he  has  never  been  equalled  in  any  age,  pri- 
marily because  of  the  fact  that  he  was  utterly 


230 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


devoid  of  reverence  or  respect  for  any  institu- 
tion and  was,  thus,  wholly  free  to  give  full 
expression  to  his  reactions  against  every  phase 
of  obscurantism.  His  most  finished  historical 
work  was  the  'Siecle  dc  Louis  XIV,'  which 
Fueter  describes  as  "the  first  modern  H'ilO'''^-'l 
\vorlj."  In  it  he  broke  wholly  with  the  annal- 
istic,  and  even  with  any  strict  chronological  sys- 
tem, and  for  the  first  time  divided  an  historical 
work  in  accordance  with  the  topical  system  of 
arrangement.  Again,  it  was  the  first  time  that 
the  civilization  of  a  great  Euroncan  state  had 
been  described  in  its  totality.  Voltaire's  work 
was  no  mere  skillful  compilation;  it  was  an 
attempt  to  exhibit  the  main  currents  of  develop- 
ment in  the  whole  life  of  a  powerful  state  and 
a  cultured  society.  As  was  the  case  with  all 
the  internationallv-mindcd  rationalists,  there 
was  little  of  that  chauvinism  in  his  work  which 
disfigured  the  work  of  the  political  historians 
of  the  following  century.  Much  less  thorough, 
but  equally  significant  was  his  *£i^_S3JX-Jcs 
^oeurs, >  generally  regarded  as  the  fir,^t  univer- 
sal history-  in  the  true  sense  ot  the  term.  TF 
^a'§  planned  as  a  vast  "Kulturgeschichtc"  of 
all  ages  and  peoples,  j^hile  Voltaire  did  not 
possess  the  knowledge 'or  the  leisure  requisite 
for  its  execution  and  the  work  was  ill-propor- 
tioned and  marred  by  serious  and  almost  fatal 
omissions,  it  was,  nevertheless,  one  of  the  great 
landmarks  in  the  development  of  historiographyj 
It  was  the  real  foundation  of  the  history  of 
civilization  in  its  modern  sense;  it  was  the  first 
work  in  which  credit  was  given  to  the  non- 
Christian  contributions,  especially  of  the  Arabs, 
to  European  civilization ;_  it  first  put  political 
history  in  its  proper  relations  to  economic  and 
social  history  in  the  general  development  of 
humanity ;  and  it  silenced  forever  the  theological 
and  providential  interpretations  which  had  pre- 
vailed from  Orosius  to  Bossuet.  The  most 
fundamental  point  in  his  philosophy  of  history, 
the  notion  of  the  "genius  of  a  people, ^^  was 
later  adopted  by  the  Romanticists,  with  some 
grotesque  exaggerations,  in  their  conception  of 
a  "folk-soul.** 

Voltaire's  point  of  approach  found  several 
distinguished  representatives  in  England.  There 
was  one  important  difference,  however;  among 
the  English  writers  there  was  no  underlying  im- 
pulse towards  reform.  In  the  case  of  the  Eng- 
lish historians  of  the  period  there  was  that 
same  complacent  self-satisfaction  over  the  final 
perfection  of  English  institutions  that  was  evi- 
dent in  the  legal  works  of  Blackstone  which 
aroused  the  fury  of  Bentham.  The  best  ex- 
ample of  this  tendency  was  David  Hume  (1711- 
76).  His  'History  of  England  from  the  In- 
vasion of  Julius  Caisar  to  the  Revolution  of 
1688'  gave  Englishmen  an  interpretation  of 
their  national  history  conceived  in  the  spirit  of 
an  urbane  and  dispassionate  sceptic.  Unlike  the 
work  of  Voltaire,  Hume's  history  was  most  su- 
perficial in  its  content  and  analysis.  It  was  in 
no  way  a  history  of  English  civilization,  and 
even  the  political  history  was  superficial  and  in- 
accurate. The  section  on  the  mediaeval  period 
was  practically  worthless.  Its  onlv  merit  was 
in  its  treatment  of  the  Stuart  period,  for  which 
it  provided  the  first  truly  historical  and  analvtic 
interpretation  of  the  great^  Civil  War.  His 
point  of  view  was  wholly  insular  and  he  was 
probably  the  least  universal  of  the  rationalist 
historians.       A    much   abler  historian   was   the 


Scotchman,  William  Robertson  (1721-93),  the 
most  avowed  of  Voltaire's  English  disciples. 
Of  his  three  major  works,  'The  History  of 
Scotland';  'The  History  of  America';  and 
'The  History  of  the  I^cign  of  the  Emperor 
Charles  V,'  tne  latter,  especially  its  introduction, 
was  the  most  significant  in  the  development  of 
historical  writing.  Its  lack  of  exhaustive  schol- 
arship is  revealed  by  the  fact  that  the  author 
never  learned  to  read  German,  but  he  made 
the  best  possible  use  of  the  sources  he  employed. 
He  was  the  first  to  make  clear  the  major  out- 
lines of  the  constitutional  development  in  the 
Middle  Ages  and  was  one  of  the  earliest  to  ap- 
preciate the  cultural  contributions  of  the  mediae- 
val Church.  He  was,  however,  the  most  de- 
cided of  the  exponents  of  the  catastrophic 
theory  of  historical  causation  and  to  him  is 
mainly  due  the  prevalence  of  the  exaggerated 
notion  of  the  importance  of  the  Crusades  in 
every  phase  of  tne  later  culture  and  politics 
of  Europe  and  also  the  further  elaboration  of 
Baronius'  notion  of  the  special  significance 
of  the  year  1(X)0.  The  member  of  the  English- 
school  who  has  gained  the  most  enduring  and 
•  general  fame  was  Edward  Gibbon,  (1737-94). 
'  Generally  estimated  by  critics  as  less  able  than 
Robertson,  he  was  a  classic  example  of  the  at- 
tainment of  great  success  through  ministering 
to  the  prevailing  sentiments  of  his  time,  in  the 
possession  of  an  appealing  subject,  a  fine  classic 
style  and  the  current  complacencv  and  mild 
rationalism.  His  'Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire'  dealt  with  a  topic  which  was 
charged  with  an  age-old  thrill  and  a  compelling 
interest.  Less  profound  than  Voltaire  and 
much  less  significant  for  the  history  of  histori- 
ography, Gibbon  has  won  a  more  permanent 
reputation  as  a  historian  on  account  of  causes 
readily  understood.  In  addition  to  the  more 
attractive  and  universally  interesting  subject 
with  which  he  dealt,  it  was  also  a  much  more 
restricted  subject,  and,  possessing  abundant 
means  and  leisure,  Gibbon  was  able  to  master 
:  most  of  the  then  availaible  sources  on  his  topic. 
4 The  outstanding„siE^'fi''anrp  nf  Jus_iy£irk_£Qii- 
\  sisteTl  m  the  fact  that  it  contained  the  first 
!|  wholly  secular  and  impartial  study  of  the  rise 
jand  expansion  of  Christianity.  Possessing  a 
^cold  and  reserved  personality  he  was  not  bit- 
terly hostile,  but  divested  Christianity  of  _  its 
traditional  envelope  of  unique  supernaturalism 
and  treated  it  as  he  later  dealt  with  the  spread 
of  Mohammedanism.  The  general  outlines  of 
his  picture  have  never  been  superseded. 

In  Germany  Voltaire  found  three  followers 
in  Schlozcr,  Schmidt  and  Spittler.  While  Au- 
gust Ludwig  Schlozcr  produced  a  minor  at- 
tempt at  a  universal  history,  his  main  work  was 
done  in- the  history  of  Slavonic  Europe,  where 
he  found  his  ideal  in  the  enlightened  despotism 
of  Catherine  II.  He  had  very  limited  powers 
of  criticism,  especially  in  regard  to  biblical  mat- 
ters;  had  no  imagination  and  an  unattractive 
style;  but  he  was  far  the  greatest  philologist 
of  the  rationalist  school.  What  Voltaire  did 
for  France,  Hume  for  England,  and  Robertson 
for  ScDiland,  was  done  for  Germany  by  Michael 
Ignatz  Schmidt  (1736-94).  His  'History  of 
Germany'  was  one  of  the  most  finished  prod- 
uct>  of  rationalism  in  historical  literature. 
His  style  was  excellent;  he  was  cautious  and 
accurate  in  the  use  of  his  sources  and  was  free 
from  all  chauvinism ;  he  was  the  first  to  handle 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


231 


the  German  Reformation  in  an  impartial  man- 
ner; and  the  scope  of  his  work  resembled  Vol- 
taire's in  being  a  true  history  of  civilization. 
The  smaller  German  states  and  the  Christian 
Church  found  their  rationalist  historian  in  Lud- 
wig  Timotheus  Spittler  (1752-1810).  His  work 
was  best  in  dealing  with  very  recent  times. 
He  idealized  the  Middle  Ages,  and  to  him  is 
primarily  due  the  origin  of  that  rosy  and  ro- 
mantic conception  of  the  mediaeval  period  as 
one  in  which  the  main  events  were  tournaments 
and  the  chief  figures  were  the  trouveres,  trou- 
badours and  minnesingers.  He  was  the  first 
writer  to  handle  th.;  whole  history  of  the 
Church  from  the  rationalist  standpoint.  His 
criticism  was  relatively  mild,  but  he  adopted 
the  peculiar  attitude  of  judging  the  Church 
from  the  viewpoint  of  an  instrument  for  ad- 
vancing the  cause  of   rationalism. 

The  discussion  of  the  contributions  of  the 
school  of  Voltaire  would  not  be  complete  with- 
out a  brief  reference  to  the  work  of  two 
writers  not  technically  historians.  Though  the 
^Scienza  nuova>  of  Vico  (1668-1744)  undoubt- 
edly contained  the  first  definite  anticipation  of 
the  modern  dynamic  theory  of  progress,  he 
was  too  pious  in  his  theology  to  be  listed  among 
the  colleagues  of  Voltaire.  Such  was  not  the 
case  with  Turgot  and  Condorcet.  In  his  dis- 
course at  the  Sorbonne  in  1750  on  <The  Suc- 
cessive Advances  of  the  Human  Mind,*  Tur- 
got (1727-81)  first  set  forth  clearly  the  doc- 
trine of  continuity  in  history,  the  cumulative 
nature  of  progress  and  the  causal  sequence  be- 
tween the  different  periods  of  history  —  theories 
later  so  greatly  emphasized  by  Mr.  Freeman. 
An  equally  notable  work  was  Condorcet's 
(1743-94)  ^Historical  Sketch  of  the  Progress 
of  the  Human  Mind,*  which  contained  the  best 
statement  of  the  18th  century  doctrine  of  prog- 
ress and  perfectibility.  Less  thorough-going 
echoes  of  this  doctrine  were  heard  frorn  Kant 
in  Germany  and  Godwin  in  England. 

The  rather  advanced  rationalism  of  Voltaire 
and  his  school  could  scarcely  gain  a  general 
acceptance  and  a  sustained  success  in  the  18th 
century,  when  it  was  greatly  beyond  the  general 
level  of  contemporary  thought.  It  had  also 
many  crudities  inseparable  from  the  first 
courageous  attempt  to  reconstruct  history  and 
bring  it  in  harmony  with  the  contemporary 
progress  in  scientific  thought.  It  was  natural, 
then,  that  there  should  be  a  reaction  against 
many  of  its  premises  and  methods,  which  was 
in  part  a  recrudesence  of  obscurantism  and  in 
part  an  effort  to  correct  some  of  the  errors  of 
the  school  of  Voltaire.  The  stages  in  this  re- 
action were  gradual  and  clearly  marked.  It 
passed  through  the  more  moderate  and  con- 
servative rationalism  of  Montesquieu  to  the  al- 
most irrational  sentimentalism  of  Rousseau, 
and  ended  in  the  mystic  and  idealistic  vagaries 
of  romanticism.  The  school  of  Voltaire  did 
not  come  to  its  own  until  it  was  revived  with 
greater  profundity  by  Buckle,  Lecky,  Morley, 
Stephen  and  White,  as  a  result  of  the  reaction 
of  19th  century  science  upon  historiography. 

While  Montesquieu's  works  as  examples  of 
historical  criticism  and  accuracy  are  almost 
worthless,  his  broader  attitude  toward  general 
methodology  was  of  the  utmost  significance. 
He  was  not  at  all  violent  or  revolutionary  in 
his  political  theory,  and  his  literary  affinities 
were  with  humanism   rather   than   rationalism. 


He  did,  however,  present  certain  phases  of 
thought  which  were  a  marked  improvement  over 
Voltaire.  Accepting  Voltaire's  unanalyzed  doc- 
trine of  the  "spirit  of  a  people,**  he  tried  to 
show  how  this  was  produced  by  the  operation 
of  natural  forces,  particularly  of  climate,  and 
first  brought  out  clearly  the  fundamental  propo- 
sition that  the  excellence  of  social  institutions 
must  be  judged,  not  by  an  arbitrary  and  ab- 
solute standard,  but  by  their  relative  adapta- 
bility to  the  spirit  of  the  people  for  whom  they 
serve  or  are  intended  to  serve.  Again,  where 
Voltaire  and  his  followers  had  dropped  only 
casual  reflections,  Montesquieu  offered  a  syn- 
thesis of  the  various  factors  of  historical  de- 
velopment, which,  though  crude,  marked  a  con- 
siderable methodological  advance.  Finally, 
while  the  school  of  Voltaire  had  introduced  the 
treatment  of  commercial  factors  in  connection 
with  political  development,  Montesquieu  and  his 
followers  laid  much  more  stress  upon  the  great 
influence  of  commercial  activities  in  the  life  of 
the  state.  The  school  of  Montesquieu  most ., 
faithfully  represented  the  reaction  of  the  com- 
mercial revolution  on  European  historiography.' 

Being  primarily  a  political  philosopher  rather 
than  a  historian,  Montesquieu's  disciples  were 
more  numerous  among  the  political  theorists 
than  among  the  avowed  historians.  J.  L. 
Delolme's  *  Constitution  of  England*  ;  Adam 
Ferguson's  ^History  of  Civil  Society,*  and 
Joseph  Pnestly's  *  First  Principles  of  Govern- 
ment* were  works  that  clearly  exhibited  the 
principles  of  Montesquieu  in  the  field  of  polit- 
ical philosophy.  But  if  Montesquieu  had  few 
disciples  ajnong  historians,  he  had  at  least  one 
of  the  highest  order  in  Arnold  Hermann  Lud- 
wig  Heeren  (1760-1842),  one  of  that  brilliant 
group  of  Gottingen  professors  of  the  period. 
His  great  work  was  entitled  ^Thoughts  Con- 
cerning the  Politics,  Intercourse  and  Commerce 
of  the  Leading  Nations  of  Antiquity.*  Its  prin- 
ciples were  those  of  Montesquieu  improved  by 
the  more  scientific  analysis  of  economic  life  in 
the  works  of  Adam  Smith.  With  great  skill  he 
attempted  to  reconstruct  the  commercial  life  of 
antiquity  and  to  indicate  its  hitherto  unsus- 
pected influence  upon  the  course  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  various  nations.  Heeren  was  one 
of  the  best  writers  among  historians.  Abandon- 
ing all  attempts  at  rhetorical  flourish,  he  pro- 
duced a  most  thoughtful  work  written  with 
great  clarity  and  coherence.  Edouard  Meyer, 
the  greatest  of  authorities  on  the  history  of  the 
ancient  nations,  has  called  Heeren  the  leader 
of  all  who  have  subsequently  attempted  to  deal 
with  this  field. 

Much  less  sound  was  the  remaining  group 
of  the  rationalist  school,  that  which  followed 
the  lead  of  Rousseau  and  formed  the  logical 
transition  from  rationalism  to  romanticism. 
There  were  a  number  of  important  differences 
between  Rousseau  and  Voltaire  in  their  attitude 
toward  historical  and  social  problems.  In  the 
first  place,  Voltaire  was  purely  intellectr.al  and 
critical  and  little  moved  by  sentiment ;  Rous- 
seau was  almost  pathologically  emotional,  sym- 
pathetic and  sentimental.  In  the  second  place, 
Voltaire  was  realistic  and  practical ;  Rousseau 
was  idealistic  and  Utopian.  Finally,  Voltaire 
wrote  from  the  standpoint  of  the  bourgeoisie, 
praised  enlightened  despotism,  and  had  little 
faith  in  the  political  ability  of  the  illiterate 
masses;  Rousseau  wrote  as  an  ardent  exponent 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISJE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


of  the  release  of  the  masses  from  despotic 
political  power.  Until  the  period  of  the  French 
Revolution,  Rousseau's  views  could  gain  little 
currency  in  France  for  the  intellectual  circles 
were  controlled  by  aristocrats,  I)ut  in  Germany 
he  found  several  enthusiastic  disciples. 

The  most  attractive  of  Rousseau's  German 
disciples  in  the  licid  of  history  was  the  poet- 
dramatist-historian  Fricdrich  Schiller  {17S9- 
1805),  whose  chief  works  were  the  'History  of 
the  Rebellion  of  the  Netherlands  against  the 
Spanish  Rule'  and  'The  History  of  the  Thirty 
Years  War.*  His  works  presented  a  combina- 
tion of  the  sentimeiU  and  pathos  of  Rousseau 
with  the  native  powers  of  a  great  dramatist 
and  poet.  In  his  history  of  the  Dutch  revolt 
he  found  the  basis  of  an  epic  of  deliverance 
from  oppression,  while  in  the  description  oi' 
the  Thirty  Years'  War  he  saw  in  Gustavus 
Adolphus  and  Wallenstein  tjje  central  figures 
for  a  great  historical  drama. "[j^t  scarcely  needs 
to  be  pointed  out  that  in  his  grand  epic  and 
dramatic  themes  there  was  no  place  for  the 
commonplace  description  of  the  elements  of 
culture  and  civilizatioqJ~^He  had  ^reat  power 
of  clear  preliminary  analj'sis  of  political  move- 
ments, but  once  his  narrative  got  under  way 
the  poet  and  dramatist  gained  complete  control 
over  the  historian,  and  his  work,  like  that  of 
Carlylc,  was  a  contribution  to  great  literature 
rather  than  to  historiograph}'.  A  much  more 
influential  historian  among  contemporaries,  but 
incomparably  inferior  in  every  sense  to  Schiller, 
was  Johannes  Miillcr  (1752-1809).  His  most 
famous  work  was  the  'History  of  the  Swiss 
Confederation.'  Though  possessing  a  memory 
rivalling  Macaulay's  and  a  zeal  for  the  study 
of  sources  comparable  to  that  of  Coulanges,  he 
lacked  wholly  Macaulay's  power  of  analysis, 
organization  and  narrative,  and  had  none  of  the 
cr't'cal  power  of  Coulanges.  Though  he  read 
all  the  available  sources,  he  not  only  lacked  in 
organizing  ability,  but  was  also  so  devoid  of 
critical  powers  as  to  be  unable  to  detect  and 
exclude  contradictions  in  his  own  narrative. 
To  Rousseau's  sentimental  devotion  to  liberty 
he  added  a  pedantic  imitation  of  classical 
rhetoric.  His  Swiss  history  became  an  epic  of 
freedom  combining  the  methods  of  Rousseau 
and  Livy.  His  24  books  of  general  history 
were  significant  only  in  that  they  contributed 
to  the  exaggeration  of  that  radically  erroneous 
conception  of  the  general  "Gemiitlichkeil"  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  which  had  been  given  a  power- 
ful initial  impulse  in  the  work  of  Spittler. 
Rather  a  representative  of  several  of  the  phases 
of  the  rationalistic  historiography  than  a  com- 
plete disciple  of  Rousseau  was  Johann  Gott- 
fried Herder  (1744-1803).  His  notable  work  — 
'Reflections  on  the  Philosophy  of  the  History 
of  Humanity' — was  a  composite  of  many  cur- 
rent doctrines.  It  combined  Rousseau's  exag- 
gerated enthusiasm  for  the  state  of  nature  and 
freedom  from  authority,  Voltaire's  conception 
of  the  reality  and  permanence  of  national  char- 
acter, Montesquieu's  doctrine  of  the  relation 
between  national  character  and  physical  en- 
vironment, and  the  theological  conception,  later 
expanded  by  Hegel,  of  the  gradual  develop- 
ment of  humanity  toward  a  state  of  freedom. 
His  zeal  for  the  state  of  nature  and  the  nat- 
ural man  led  him  to  restrict  his  discussion 
chiefly  to  primitive  peoples.    His  particular  cm- 


l)hasis  upon  the  fixity  of  national  character  and 
the  organic  unity  of  national  culture  put  him 
in  direct  line  with  the  romanticists.  Friedrich 
Christoph  Schlosser  (1776-1861)  took  over 
Rousseau's  conceptions  through  the  intermedi- 
ary of  Kant's  "categorical  imperative."  In  his 
'History  of  ihe  Iconoclastic  Emperors'  and  his 
unfinished  'History  of  the  World,'  he  antici- 
pated the  attitude  of  Lord  Acton  and  passed 
judgment  on  historical  events  and  figures  ac- 
cording to  the  principles  of  the  Kantian  precepts 
of  individual  morality.  His  work  had  a  sombre 
cast,  due  to  his  inordinate  passion  for  Dante's 
'Divine  Comedy,'  and  his  w-orks  were  full  of 
harsh  and  hasty  criticisms  of  a  purely  subjec- 
tive nature.  He  was  not  a  critical  scholar  and 
he  ignored  social  and  economic  history.  His 
chief  significance  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  was 
one  of  the  first  notable  historians  to  lay  great 
emphasis  upon  the  political  importance  of  a 
national   literature. 

3.  Romanticism  and  Historiography. — Even 
before  Louis  XVI  had  issued  the  royal  edict 
directing  an  election  of  delegates  to  an  "Estates- 
General,"  the  reaction  against  the  frank  and 
direct  rationalism  of  Voltaire  had  definitely 
commenced  in  the  works  of  the  above-men- 
tioned disciples  of  Rousseau.  To  the  conserva- 
tive element  it  seemed  that  the  events  of  the 
French  Revolution  had  finally  demonstrated  the 
futility  of  the  rationalistic  doctrines  of  catas- 
trophic causation  and  the  possibility  of  altering 
social  institutions  through  the  application  of  _a 
few  "self-evident  dictates  of  pure  reason."  PCTn- 
fortunately,  this  laudable  attempt  to  correcrnhe 
artificiality  of  the  dogmas  of  Voltaire  led  to  a 
reaction  in  the  opposite  direction  which  was 
even  less  valid  and  progressive  than  the  theories 
of  the  rationalists.  V^omanticism  in  historiogra- 
phy meant  a  decided  retrogession  in  the  direc- 
tion of  obscuranticism,  and  was  an  integral  part 
of  that  reaction  in  social  science  which  is  chiefly 
identified  with  the  names  of  Burke,  De  Bonald, 
De  Maistre  and  Von  Haller.  The  basic  his- 
torical premise  of  the  historiography  of  roman- 
ticism was  the  doctrine  of  the  gradual  and  un- 
conscious nature  of  ciiltura't'evolution.  It  pro- 
claimed't"he  unique  organic  unity  and  develop- 
ment of  all  forms  of  national  culture.  There 
was  a  decided  mystic  strain  in  their  thinking 
which  maintained  that  the  unconscious  creative 
forces  moved  and  operated  in  a  mysterious 
maimer  which  defied  rationalistic  analysis.  It 
was  held  that  all  were  subject  to  the  operation 
of  these  mj'sterious  forces  of  psychic  power, 
which  were  later  termed  by  Ranke,  the  "Zeitge- 
ist." Great  emphasis  was  laid  upon  tradition 
and  the  alleged  "ideas"  which  went  to  rnake  up 
this  spirit  of  the  age  and  of  the  nation. rThese 
conceptions  naturally  led  to  a  dogma  or  polit- 
ical fatalism  w^hich  represented  the  individual 
or  the  nation  as  powerless  before  the  mass  of 
creative  spiritual  forces.  Revolution  was  repre- 
sented as  particularly  wicked,  futile  and  worthy 
of  special  condemnation.  There  grew  up  that 
philosophy  of  political  "quietism,"  which  fitted 
in  excellently  with  the  current  laisscs-faire  doc- 
trines of  the  economists  and  political  theorists. 
Out  of  this  tendency  there  developed  that  noto- 
rious and  specious  myth  representing  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  peoples  as  the  perfect  examples  of  polit- 
ical quietism,  and,  hence,  of  inherent  political 
capacitj',    while  an   equallj'   erroneous   doctrine 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


233 


pictured  the  French  as  the  typical  example  of  a 
revolutionary  and  unstable  nation  utterly  de- 
void of  all  political  capacity,  [^his  funda- 
mental error  did  more  than  anything  else  to 
mar  the  accuracy  of  19th  century  political  his- 
tory and  philosophy  and  has  not  even  yet  been 
fully  eradicate(£\  Again,  the  idea  of  the  pure, 
indigenous  and'^ontaneous  nature  of  national 
culture  led  to  a  narrowing  of  that  cosmopolitan 
outlook  of  the  rationalists  and  the  centering  of 
attention  on  purety  national  history.  Further, 
for  each  nation  the  period  of  particular  fertility 
for  historical  research  was  held  to  be  tTie  Mid- 
dle Ages.  This  tendency  was  due  in  part  to  the 
strange  misconception  that  this  was  the  period 
of  the  fixing  of  the  several  national  cultures 
and  in  part  to  the  psj'chic  affinity  of  the  roman- 
ticists with  the  mediaeval  mental  reaction  to  the 
problems  of  existence  and  causation.  Language 
was  believed  to  be  the  vital  mark  or  criterion 
of  nationality.  This  doctrine  took  its  deepest 
root  in  Germany  where  language  was  almost 
the  only  bond  of  nationality,  and  it  led  to  the 
great  researches  in  philology  associated  with 
the  names  of  Humboldt,  Wolf,  the  brothers 
Grimm  and  Lachmann.  On  account  of  the  fact 
that  the  romanticists  maintained  the  hopeless- 
less  of  any  detailed  analysis  of  historical  causa- 


tion, theii^nhilosophy  of  history  ran  in  a  ^'vicious 
circle.*  <_Without  giving  any  scierftific  explana- 
tion of  tKe  development  of  the  spirit  of  a  na- 
tion, they  attributed  the  peculiarities  of  national 
institutions,  laws,  literature  and  government  to 
the  genius  of  the  nation,  and  then  represented 
national  character  as  the  product  of  the,  art,  lit- 
erature, laws  and  institutions  of  a  pe©pleJ?But 
in  spite  of  the  semi-obscurantic  tendencies  and 
the  philosophical  crudities  of  the  romanticists, 
they  must  be  given  credit  for  having  done  much 
to  correct  the  vicious  catastrophic  theory  of  the 
rationalists,  and  for  having  emphasized  the  ele- 
ment of  unconscious  growth  in  historical  de- 
velopment and  the  vital  truth  of  the  organic 
unity  of  a  cultural  complex.  It  was  left  for 
Lamprecht,  nearlj-  a  century  later,  to  take  over 
what  was  really  valuable  in  the  romantic  doc- 
trines and  work  them  over  into  his  famous 
theory  of  historical  development  as  a  process 
of  transformations  and  mutations  within  the 
collective  psychology  of  both  the  nation  and 
humanity. 

The  expressions  of  romanticism  in  his- 
toriography were  many  and  varied.  Its  doc- 
trines were  employed  in  the  field  of  the  in- 
vestigation of  legal  origins  by  Karl  Friedrich 
Eichhorn  (1781-1854),  whose  'Political  and 
Legal  History  of  Germany'  was  devoted  pri- 
marily to  the  study  of  early  German  law;  and, 
/above  all,  by  Friedrich  Karl  von  Savigny  (1779- 
1861)  in  his  ^History  of  Roman  Law  in  the 
Middle  Ages,'  which  was  the  most  ^ble  and 
dogmatic  defense  of  the  conception  of  law  as  a 
product  of  the  national  '^genius''  of  a  people. 
In  the  field  of  the  history  and  analysis  of  re- 
ligion and  literature  it  received  its  most  notable 
expression  in  Francois  Rene  Auguste  de  Chat- 
eaiAriand's  (1768-1848)  < Genius  of  Christian- 
ity'; in  Madame  de  Stael's  (1766-1817)  'Liter- 
ature in  Its  Relation  to  Social  Institutions^  ;  in 
Abel  Frangois  Villemain's  (1790-1870)  ^Sketch 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,'  and  in  the  'His- 
tory of  German  Poetry'  by  Gcorg  Gottfried 
Gervinus  (1805-71).     R'umanticism  entered  the 


philosophy  of  history  in  the  works  of  Friedrich 
Schlegel  (1772-1829),  F.  W.  J.  Schellmg  (1775- 
1854)  and  Georg  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel 
(1771-1831).  Schlegel  viewed  the  historical 
process  as  the  gradual  restoration  in  man  of 
the  lost  image  of  God  through  the  operation 
of  a  divinely  revealed  religion.  Schelling  in- 
terpreted historical  development  as  the  gradual 
revelation  of  God  through  the  operation  of  the 
unconscious  forces  of  creative  genius.  Hegel's 
'Philosophy  of  History'  was  founded  upon  his 
dialectic  system  of  antithesis  followed  by 
synthesis,  and  upon  his  spiritualistic  interpreta- 
tion of  history  as  "the  necessary  progress  in  the 
consciousness  of  libert}^"  Working  from  these 
premises  he  adapted  the  facts  of  history  in  such 
a  way  as  to  portray  the  successive  migrations 
of  the  "Weltgeist'^  from  the  Orient  to  Lutheran 
Germany,  bringing  with  it  a  continuall}^  expand- 
ing consciousness  and  realization  of  liberty. 
Hegel's  rather  grotesque  system  was  purged  of 
its  most  apparent  crudities  and  applied  with 
much  greater  learning  and  accuracy  by  Ferdi- 
nand Christian  Baur  (1792-1860)  to  the  history 
of  Christianity,  and  by  Edouard  Zeller  (1814—"'^ 
1908)  to  the  reconstruction  of  early  Greek  phi- 
losophy. The  narrative  school  of  romanticist 
historians  was  not  only  dominated  by  the  gen- 
eral theories  enumerated  above,  but  by  the 
literary  canons  of  the  historical  novels  of 
Walter  Scott  with  their  great  emphasis  upon 
the  element  of  "local  color."  This  tendency  was 
really  anti-historical,  in  that  it  aimed  primarily 
to  destroy  all  sense  of  historical  perspective 
and  to  portray  episodes  or  periods  in  the  past 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  them  have  the 
vividness  and  intimacy  of  contemporary  events. 
It  was  a  contribution  to  literature  rather  than 
to  scientific  history.  Its  only  real  impulse  to 
improved  historical  writing  lay  in  the  fact  that 
its  literary  attractiveness  awakened  an  interest 
in  history  on  a  wider  scale  than  ever  before, 
and  brought  into  the  field  many  eminent 
scholars  whose  individual  contributions  to  his- 
torical knowledge  were  greater  than  those  of 
all  of  the  narrative  school  of  romanticists  com- 
bined. Of  this  variety  of  narrative  romanticist 
historical  writing  the  most  important  products 
were  the  'History  of  the  Conquest  of  England 
by  the  Normans'  and  the  'Narratives  of  the 
Merovingian  Period'  by  Augustin  Thierry/ 
(1795-1856)  ;  the  'History  of  the  Dukes  of  Bur- 
gundy' by  Baron  de  Barante  (1782-1866),  and 
the- 'History  of  the  Italian  States'  bv  Heinrich 
Leo  (1799-1878).  A  stillfurther  intensification 
of  the  subjective  element  in  the  narrative  school 
was  reached  in  the  works  of  Michelet,  Carlyle 
and  Froude,  where  an  attempt  was  made  not 
only  to  bring  the  reader  in  immediate  touch  with 
the  setting  of  the  events  narrated,  but  also  with 
the  personal  impressions  and  attitudes  of  the 
author.  The  'History  of  France'  of  Jules/' 
Michelet  (1798-1874)  was  the  greatest  product 
of  French  historical  literature.  The  author 
was  dominated  by  a  passionate  attachment  to 
his  countrj^,  possessed  a  marvelous  creative 
imagination  and  a  style  notable  for  its  word 
painting  and  its  power  of  svTnbolical  presenta- 
tion, and  stood  forth  as  the  great  historical 
apologist  for  French  democracy.  The  best  por- 
tions are  those  dealing  with  the  picturesque 
figures  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  scenes  of 
the    French    Revolution.      The    least   attractive 


234 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


personality  of  the  group  and  the  least  worthy 
as  a  historian  was  Thomas  Carlyle  (1795-1881). 
In  radical  contrast  to  Michclet  he  was  pos- 
sessed of  a  sour  contempt  for  the  masses  and 
an  equally  exaggerated  interest  in  the  pic- 
turesque figures  of  history.  To  him  history 
was  but  the  collective  l)iography  of  the  con- 
spicuous figures  through  the  ages,  and  he  was 
responsible  more  than  any  other  historian  for 
the  conventional  disdain  ut  the  modern  his- 
lorian  for  those  commonplace  things  of  daily 
life  which  have  had  incomparably  greater  in- 
lluence  upon  social  development  than  the  pic- 
turesque personalities.  Carlyle  indulged  his 
prejudices  in  his  'Letters  and  Speeches  of 
Cromwell,'  his  'History  of  Frederick  the 
Great'  and  his  'French  Revolution.'  While 
possessing  only  moderate  value  as  sources  of 
information,  on  account  of  the  writer's 'uncon- 

/trollcd  prejudices  and  his  utter  lack  of  critical 
method,  they  earned  him  the  undisputed  position 
as  "the  greatest  of  English  portrait  painters." 
While  his  name  has  been  adopted  to  designate 
chronic  inaccuracy  in  historical  investigation, 
Carlyle's  disciple,  James  Anthony  Froude 
(1818-94),  was  a  much  abler  historian  than  his 

•  master.  His  faults  were  those  of  one  constitu- 
tionally rather  than  carelessly  or  intentionally 
inaccurate,  as  he  had  a  keen  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  critical  methods  and  his  work  was 
the  first  extended  English  history  written  on 
the  basis  of  unpublished  documents.  His  <His- 
tory  of  England  from  the  Fall  of  Woolsey  to 
the  Defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada'  was  an 
epic  of  English  deliverance  from  the  "slavery  of 
Rome,"  and  his  Carlylian  attraction  for  great 
personalities  found  ample  scope  for  expression 
in  his  portraits  of  Henry  VHI  and  Burleigh. 
As  a  writer  he  was  approached  among  English 
historians  only  by  Macaulay.  "No  other  Eng- 
lish historian,"  says  Gooch,  "has  possessed  a 
style  so  easy,  so  flowing,  so  transparent." 
America  found  its  sole  distinguished  represen- 
tative of  the  school  of  Carlyle  and  Froude  in 

sjjohn  Lothrop  Motley  (1814-77),  who  devoted 
his  life  to  a  narration  of  the  struggle  of  the 
Netherlands  against  Spain.  Surpassing  even 
Freeman  in  his  passion  for  liberty,  he  found  a 
most  congenial  subject  in  tracing  the  successful 
revolution  of  the  Dutch  and  the  establishment 
of  their  republic.  For  word  painting  and  vivid 
description  of  dramatic  scenes  only  Carlyle  has 
equalled  him  among  historians  writing  in  the 
English  tongue.  While  the  conceptions  of 
romanticism  gained  some  dominion  over  the 
minds  of  greater  scholars,  such  as  Ranke,  they 
served  rather  to  stimulate  the  author's  interest 
in  history  than  to  vitiate  his  scholarship. l-With 
its  emphasis  on  the  doctrine  of  the  "genius  of 
a  nation"  and  its  deep  emotional  basis,  romantic- 
ism was  a  powerful  influence  in  stimulating  the 
nationalistic  historiography  which  doxoinated 
the  historical  writing  of  the  19th  ccntury.l  ^ 

4.  Nationality  and  Historiography;4>The 
commercial  revolution  not  onl^-  was  the  main 
factor  in  arousing  historical  interest  in  non- 
European  peoples  and  a  powerful  impulse  in 
the  development  of  the  new  natural  science  and 
its  accompanying  sceptical  philosophy,  but  was 
also  the  chi-f  force  in  bringing  to  completion 
the  process  of  shaping  the  modern  national 
states  out  of  the  great  feudal  monarchies  of 
the  later  Middle  Ages^  "^By  its  contributions  to 


ihe  increase  of  the  capital  and  resources  at  the 
disposal  of  the  monarch,  and  its  creation  of  a 
loyal  middle  class,  it  enabled  the  kings  to  pro- 
vide a  hired  oflicialdom  and  militarj'  force,  by 
means  of  which  they  could  crush  the  opposition 
of  the  feudal  nobility  and  bring  to  perfection 
the  modern  national  state.  The  psychological 
impulses  arising  from  the  welling-up  of  national 
pride  in  the  newly  fashioned  states  led  to  the 
production  of  narratives  glorifying  the  national 
past  and  to  feverish  activity  in  collecting  the 
sources  of  information  which  preserved  the 
priceless  records  of  the  achievements  of  the 
nation  from  the  most  remote  period.  While 
this  movement,  in  its  earliest  phases,  goes  back 
to  the  16lh  century  it  took  on  its  modern  form 
after  the  French  Revolution,  the  Napoleonic 
Wars  and  the  regeneration  of  Priissia  had  con- 
tributed so  greatly  to  the  creation  of  an  ardent 
national  self-consciousness  in  most  of  the 
European  states.  Coming  at  this  time,  it  was 
reinforced  by  the  then  popular  tenets  of  roman- 
tioism  emphasizing  the  importance  of  national 
character  and  the  imperishable  "genius  of  a 
people."  The  nationalistic  impulse  was  re- 
freshed from  another  source  in  the  middle  of 
the  19th  century  by  the  vicious  influence  of  the 
notorious  'Essai  sur  I'inegalite  des  races  hu- 
maines,'  published  by  Count  Joseph  Arthur 
of  Gobineau  (1816-1882)  in  1854.  It  proclaimed 
the  determining  influence  of  racial  differences 
on  the  course  of  historical  development,  as- 
serted the  inherent  superiority  of  the  "Aryan" 
race,  and  held  that  racial  degeneration  was  the 
inevitable  result  of  its  mixture  with  inferior 
races.  His  now  utterly  discredited  doctrines 
gained  great  vogue  among  French,  English,  and 
especially  among  nationalistic  German,  histor- 
ians and  publicists,  culminating  in  the  Teutonic 
rhapsody  of  Charles  Kingsley  and  Houston 
Stuart  Chamberlain,  the  Gallic  ecstasy  of  Mau- 
rice Barres  and  the  Saxon  paeans  of  Kipling 
and  Homer  Lea.  Not  only  was  this  doctritie 
effective  in  developing  a  still  greater  degree  of 
chauvinism  upon  the  part  of  the  governing 
"races,"  but  it  also  led  to  the  persecution  of 
minority  "races,"  and  the  consequent  stimulation 
of  their  nationalistic  sentiments. 

Perhaps  the  earliest  state  to  begin  a  national 
history  was  Germany  in  the  days  of  humanism 
and  the  old  empire.  The  cultured  Emperor 
Maximilian  I  (1493-1519)  followed  the  example 
of  Charlemagne  in  gathering  to  his  court  at 
Vienna  some  of  the  leading  historical  scholars 
of  German  humanism.  Conrad  Celtis  revived 
an  interest  in  the  'Germania'  of  Tacitus. 
Johannes  Spiessheimer  (1473-1529),  better 
known  as  Cuspinian,  made  a  critical  study  of 
the  historical  works  of  Jordanes  and  Otto  of 
Freising.  Irenicus,  Peutinger  and  Beatus 
Rhenanus  (1486-1547)  exhibited  the  spirit  of 
Blondus  in  their  researches  into  German  antiqui- 
ties. Their  activity  was  soon  smothered,  how- 
ever, in  the  controversies  of  the  Reformation, 
and  interest  in  secular  and  national  history 
waned.  A  century  later  Melchior  Goldast 
(1578-1635)  produced  his  famous  collection  of 
documents  dealing  with  early  and  mediaeval 
German  history  and  public  law,  known  as  the 
'Monarchia  romani  imperii,'  which  was  the 
standard  German  collection  until  the  *Monu- 
menta'  had  covered  th :  same  period  and  mate- 
rial in  a  more  thorough   fashion.     The  distin- 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


235 


guished  philosopher  G.  W.  Leibnitz  (1646-1716) 
was  ambitious  to  provide  a  collection  of  the 
sources  of  German  history  which  would  rival 
those  on  French  history  which  had  been 
gathered  by  Duchesne.  He  was  not,  however, 
able  to  obtain  the  necessary  imperial  support 
and  the  project  had  to  be  abandoned.  He 
merely  produced  a  collection  on  the  history  of 
the  Guelfs  as  a  by-product  of  his  history  oi 
the  dynasty  of  Brunswick.  The  great  rnodern 
collection  of  the  sources  of  German  history, 
the  justly  famous  *Monumenta  Germanise  His- 
torica,*  was  a  product  of  the  spirit  of  the  War 
iof  Liberation  and  was  begun  by  that  greatest  of 
'all  the  German  statesmen  of  his  time,  Baron 
vom  Stein.  Discouraged  by  the  reactionary 
tendencies  of  the  period  following  the  Con- 
gress of  Vienna,  Stein  devoted  his  energies  to 
the  stimulation  of  popular  interest  in  German 
history.  Failing  to  obtain  government  support 
for  a  collection  of  the  sources  of  German  his- 
tory, he  raised  the  funds  from  the  resources  of 
himself  and  his  friends,  and  with  rare  good  for- 
tune secured  an  editor  of  great  scholarship  and 
energy  in  the  Hanoverian  archivist,  G.  H.  Pertz. 
Pertz  carried  the  burden  of  the  editorship  for 
a  half  century,  aided  by  the  best  of  German 
scholars,  most  prominent  of  his  colleagues  t)€- 
ing  the  constitutional  historian,£Georg  VVartZj 
This  magnificent  and  colossal  contpilation  in- 
cludes all  the  important  sources  of  information 
regarding  German  history  from  the  time  of  the 
Roman  writers  on  the  inyasions,  and  is  still  in 
process  of  execution. '^i;^  was,  perhaps,  one  of 
the  greatest  landmarks  m  the  development  of 
scientific  historical  writing,  as  it  alone  made 
possible  the  productivity  and  accuracy  of  the 
succeeding  generations  of  historiarrs:^ 

National  history  in  Germany  vvas  not  lim- 
ited to  the  collection  of  sources,  but  received 
expression  in  glowing  narratives  which  usually 
found  their  theme  in  the  glories  of  the  Ger- 
man imperial  past  of  the  mediaeval  period  or  in 
laudatory  accounts  of  the  HohenzoUern  achieve- 
ments, which  served  as  the  basis  of  enthu- 
siastic proposals  for  a  Prussian  revival  of  the 
glories  of  the  empire.  Schmidt  had  written  a 
history  of  Germany  from  the  rationalist  stand- 
point, but  his  cosmopolitan  outlook  made  his 
work  quite  unsatisfactory  to  the  patriots. 
Wilken  initiated  the  nationalistic  narrative  by 
an  account  of  German  prowess  in  the  period  of 
the  Crusades.  Luden,  under  the  spell  of  Jo- 
hannes Miiller's  views  of  the  mediaeval  period, 
produced  a  ^History  of  the  German  People,* 
in  which  he  aimed  to  arouse  national  enthu- 
siasm for  the  magnificence  of  mediaeval  Ger- 
man3^  Voigt  contributed  an  epic  dealing  with 
the  conversion  and  conquest  of  Prussia  by  the 
Teutonic  knights.  Raumer  pictured  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  Hohenstaufens,  and  Stenzel  por- 
trayed the  deeds  of  the  Franconian  emperors 
with  critical  skill  as  well  as  patriotic  edifica- 
tion. Giesebrecht  analyzed  the  formation  of 
the  mediaeval  empire  with  a  display  of  scholar- 
ship not  less  remarkable  than  his  Teutonic 
fervor.  Thoughhis  history  of  the  Reformation 
was  a  powerful  influence  in  making  Luther  the 
great  German  national  hero,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  Ranke  and  his  immediate  disciples  shared 
something  of  the  universal  outlook  of  the  ra- 
tionalists, but  with  the  rise  of  the  "Prussian 
School"  nationalistic  history  became  even  more 
chauvinistic  and  dynastic.    Haiisser  contributed 


a  voluminous  epic  on  the  War  of  the  Libera- 
tion in  his  ^History  of  Germany,  1786-1815.* 
Duncker,  the  historian  of  antiquity,  from  his 
work  in  editing  the  state  papers  of  the  great 
Hohenzollerns  developed  a  fervid  admiration 
for  the  dynasty  which  convinced  him  of  its  fit- 
ness to  revive  the  imperial  glories  of  old  Ger- 
many. The  first  massive  panegyric  of  Prussian- 
ism  was  the  work  of  Johann  Gustav  Droysen 
(1808-84),  who  deserted  his  early  liberalism  to 
become  an  almost  sycophantic  eulogist  of  the 
Hohenzollerns.  His  monumental  ^History  of 
Prussian  Policy*  was  marred  not  only  by  its 
grave  prejudices  in  favor  of  the  "mission**  of 
the  dynasty  he  admired,  but  also  by  the  fact 
that  it  was  almost  wholly  limited  to  the  super- 
ficial field  of  Prussian  foreign  politics  with 
little  attention  even  to  domestic  policy,  to  say 
nothing  of  its  total  omission  of  the  deeper 
social  conditions  and  economic  forces.  The 
story  was  picked  up  where  Droysen  had  left  it 
by^Heinrich  von  Treitschke  (1834-96).  His 
/History  of  Germany  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury* ranks  with  the  histories  of  Michelet  and 
Macaulay  as  one  of  the  literary  masterpieces  of 
modern  historiograph^  While  it  was  charged 
with  all  of  the  vivid  enthusiasm  for  Prussian 
leadership  which  marred  the  work  of  Droysen, 
Trcitschke's  work  at  least  had  the  merit  of  de- 
voting adequate  attention  to  the  fundamental 
cultural  forces  in  national  development.  Hein- 
rich  von  Sybel  (1817-95),  the  third  of  the  three 
leaders  of  the  Prussian  school,  began  his  work 
as  a  disciple  of  Ranke  by  a  brilliant  work  on 
the  First  Crusade  and  by  a  profound  study  of 
the  origins  of  the  German  kingship,  but  the 
stirring  political  situation  in  the  middle  of  the 
century  led  him  away  from  the  poise  of  his 
master  and  he  became  a  thorough  advocate  of 
German  unity  through  Prussian  military  leader- 
ship. His  ^History  of  the  French  Revolution' 
was  a  massive  polemic  against  the  whole  move- 
ment, and  its  central  theme  was  the  old  roman- 
ticist dogma  of  the  political  incapacity  of  the 
French.  From  this  spectacle  of  alleged  political 
ineotitude  Sj^bel  turned  to  an  account  of  the 
events  which  demonstrated  the  supreme  capacity 
of  his  nation  in  political  affairs  —  the  founda- 
tion of  the  German  Empire  by  Bismarck.  His 
voluminous  worjc  on  <The  Foundation  of  the 
German  Empire  by  William  P  showed  wonder- 
ful power  in  the  clear  presentation  of  a  mass 
of  political  and  diplomatic  detail,  but  was 
fatally  disfigured  by  downright  dishonesty  in 
its  presentation  of  Bismarck's  foreign  policy, 
from  which  all  the  criminal  duplicity  was  care- 
fully excluded.  By  the  time  Sybel  had  finished 
his  work,  history  in  Germany  had  become  too 
weak  a  vehicle  to  serve  as  a  leading  instrument 
for  advancing  national  aspirations.  Its  place 
was  taken  by  the  literary  products  of  Peters, 
Tannenberg  and  the  Pan-German  expansionists; 
of  Bernhardi  and  the  ultra-militarists;  and  of 
Chamberlain  and  the  blatant  Teutonists.  The 
complete  complicity  of  the  Prussian  historians 
in  the  production  of  this  state  of  national  exalta- 
tion has  been  clearly  revealed  by  Guilland. 

Nearly  a  century  after  the  beginnings  of 
German  national  historiography  at  the  court  of 
Maximilian  the  French  began  to  turn  their 
attention  to  the  analysis  and  collection  of  the 
sources  of  their  national  history.  This  move- 
ment may  conveniently  be  dated  from  the  pub- 
I'cation  of  the  ^Franco-GalHa*  of  Frangois  Hot- 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


man  in  1574.  Other  early  examples  of  this 
tendency  were  the  *Anti(initts  K:ii''"ises  el 
franqoises'  of  Claude  Fauchet  (157'>);  the 
*Annales  Francorum '  of  Pierre  Pithoii  (1588)  ; 
the  'Reihcrches  dc  la  France'  of  Etienne  Pas- 
quicr  (1611),  and  the  material  on  the  Crusades 
in  the  *Gesta  Dei  per  Francos*  of  Jacques 
\.  Bongars  (1611-17).  The  true  begiiniing  of  the 
.X  critical  collection  of  sources  was  marked  by 
■'  '  the  work  of  Andre  Duchesne  (1584-1640)  in 
compiling  the  'Histori;e  Normannorum  scrip- 
tores  antiqui'  (1610)  and  the  'Historiae  Fran- 
ct)rum  scriptores  coaetanei*  (1636f.)  ;  the 
"geneologics"  and  the  ^Gallia  christiana*  of  the 
brothers  Sainte-Marlhe  (1572-1650,  1655);  the 
critical  editions  of  Villehardouin  and  Joinville 
by  Charles  du  Frcsnc  du  Cange  (1610-88); 
and  the  'Capitularia  reg/im  Francorum*  of 
Etienne  Baluze  (1630-1718).  During  the  last 
half  of  the  17lh  century  and  the  first  half  of  the 
ISlh  this  work  of  collecting  sources  was  car- 
ried on  almost  entirely  by  the  scholarly  Bene- 
dictine monks  of  the  Congregation  of  Saint 
Maur  at  Saint-Germain-des-Pres  in  Paris, 
which  was  founded  between  1618  and  1630  by 
Doms  Martin  Tesniere  and  Gregoire  Tarisse, 
and  whose  leader  in  historical  scholarship  was 
the  great  Jean  Mabillon  (1632-1707).  Only  a 
few  of  their  more  notable  collections  can  be 
mentioned  here.  Dom  Thierry  Ruinart  (1657- 
1709)  prepared  critical  editions  of  Gregory  of 
Tours  and  Frcdegarius ;  Dom  Edmond  Mar- 
tene  (1654-1739)  the  'Thesarus  novus  anecdo- 
torum  vc^rum  jepiptota*  and  the  *Veterum 
scriptorum  et  monumentorum  amplissima  col- 
lection ;  Dom  Bernard  Montfaucon  (1655- 
1741)  *Les  Monuments  de  la  monarchic  fran- 
gaise*;  Dom  Martin  Bouquet  (1685-1754)  the 
famous  *Rerum  Gallicarum  et  Francicarum 
scriptores,'  which  is  still  being  continued  by 
modern  scholars  under  the  title  of  the  *Recueil 
des  historiens  des  Gaules  et  de  la  France;*  and 
Dom  Antoine  Rivet  de  la  Grange  (1683-1749), 
aided  Ly  Duclou,  Poncet  and  Colomb,  began 
that  unique  *Histoire  litteraire  de  la  France 'j^' 
which  wgLS-«««ipi«**i-by  the  French  Institute  m 
thcvef'y  close  of  the  last  century.  The  Mau- 
rists  also  turned  their  attention  to  the  history  of 
the  French  provinces  and  gathered  many  valu- 
X  able  collections,  the  most  famous  of  which  was 

^  the  'Histoire  generale  de  Languedoc*  of  Doms 
Vaisette  and  Vic  (1730-49),  recently  revised  by 
Molinier.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  I8th  century 
the  laymen  again  came  to  the  front,  the  most 
notable  center  of  their  activity  being  the 
Academie  des  Inscriptions  et  Belles-lettres, 
which  had  been  founded  by  Colbert  in  1663. 
The  most  valuable  product  of  their  labors  was 
the  great  collection  of  *Ordonnances  des  rois  de 
France*  by  T.  de  Lauriere,  Denis  Secoussc  and 
L.  G.  de  Brequigny  (1714-1794).  Thev  also 
continued  the  'Histoire  litteraire'  and  the  'Gal- 
lia Christiana.*  A  further  stimulus  came  when 
P.  C.  F.  Daunou  was  appointed  national  archi- 
vist by  Napoleon.  He  brought  many  foreign  ar- 
chives to  Paris  and  also  continued  the  work  on 
the  ^Histoire  litteraire*  and  the  other  great 
Benedictine  collections.  The  first  monumental 
collection  r.f  sources  produced  in  the  19th  cen- 
tury was  the  voluminous  ^Collection  de 
memoires  r<!atifs  a  I'histoire  de  France*  by 
Petitot  and  Mnnmerque  in  one  hundred  and 
thirty  volumes  (1819-29).     What  Germany  owes 


to, Stein  for  the  gathering  of  the  sources  of 
German  national  history,  France  owes  to  Guizot, 
and  more,  for  the  latter  not  only  organized  the 
movement  for  the  scientific  work  in  collecting 
and  editing  the  sources,  but  also  was  a  histor- 
ical scholar  of  the  first  order  who  contributed 
most  valuable  works  from  his  own  pen.  Be- 
fore he  left  historical  writing  for  the  field  of 
political  activity  he  had  published  a  collection 
of  thirty  volumes  bearing  the  same  title  as  that 
of  Petitot.  In  1834  he  organized  the  Societe  de 
I'histoire  de  France,  which  was  first  presided 
over  by  Barante  and  has  since  included  in  its 
membership  the  most  famous  historians  of 
France.  The  'Ouvrages  publics*  of  this  society 
have  amounted  to  over  three  hundred  and  fifty 
well  edited  volumes  of  source  material.  Even 
more  important  was  Guizot's  initiative  in  induc- 
ing Louis  Philippe  to  appoint  a  sub-committee 
of  the  ministry  of  public  education  which  was 
to  devote  itself  to  publishing  the  hitherto  un- 
published source  material  of  French  history. 
In  the  next  year  their  work  began  to  appear  in 
the  monumental  series  of  the  'Collection  de 
documents  inedits  sur  I'histoire  de  France,*  of 
which  about  three  hundred  and  thirty  volumes 
have  thus  far  been  published.  The  early  edi- 
torial associates  of  Guizot  in  this  enterprise 
were  Mignet,  Thierry,  Guerard  and  Raynouard. 
With  the  foundation  of  the  Societe  de  I'Ecole 
des  Chartes  in  1829  the  provision  of  competent 
editors  was  henceforth  assured  through  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  world's  greatest  historical 
institute  for  the  training  of  students  in  the  use 
of  documents  —  L'ficole  des  Chartes.  The 
'Documents  inedits*  are  the  ofificial  French 
counterpart  of  the  German  'Monumenta*  and 
are  even  more  valuable  in  that  they  are  confined 
entirely  to  the  presentation  of  material  never 
before  published.  The  French  have  also  ad- 
vanced a  step  beyond  any  other  nation  in  pro- 
viding great  collections  of  sources  for  a  study 
of  their  history  in  modern  times.  This  has  been 
due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  no  other  Euro- 
pean state  has  possessed  a  national  event  or 
movement  in  modern  times  at  all  comparable  in 
picturesque  or  romantic  interest  to  the  French 
Revolution.  Most  of  the  great  French  collec- 
tions of  sources  of  modern  history  relate  to  some 
phase  of  the  Revolution.  In  1903  the  socialist 
historian  and  statesman,  Jaures.  succeeded  in 
inducing  the  government  to  establish  a  commit- 
tee of  the  ministry  of  public  instruction  to  su- 
pervise the  publication  of  the  unpublished  docu- 
ments dealing  with  the  economic  history  of  the 
French  Revolution.  This  work  has  been  car- 
ried on  by  the  leading  French  historians,  and 
the  'Collection  de  documents  inedits  sur  I'his- 
toire economique  de  la  Revolution  Franqaise* 
has  been  appearing  in  successive  volumes  since 
1905.  The  municipal  government  of  Paris  has 
been  publishing  the  'Collection  de  documents 
relatifs  a  I'histoire  de  Paris  pendant  la  Revo- 
lution FranQaise'  since  1888.  In  addition  to 
these  public  collections, _  many  collections  of 
sources  dealing  with  special  phases  of  the  Revo- 
lution have  been  made  by  enterprising  scholars, 
among  whom  Aulard  and  his  pupils  have  been  , 
most  active.  ^ 

The  French  also  vied  with  the  (Germans  in 
the  production  of  nationalistic  historical  narra- 
tive. The  publication  of  Chateaubriand's 
<Genius  of  Christianity*  in  1802  gave  a  lustre 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


237 


and  romantic  touch  to  the  French  past  in  the 
middle  ages  comparable  to  the  effect  produced 

J  in  Germany  by  Spittler  and  Johannes  Miiller. 
Fauricl  anticipated  Coulanges  and  Jullian  in  his 
history  of  Gaul  by  contending  for  the  superior- 
ity of  Celtic  to  Prankish  culture  in  the  forma- 
tion of  mediaeval  civilization.  Michaud  de- 
scribed the  glories  of  the  French  in  the  period 
of  the  Crusades.  Raynouard  drew  a  vivid  pic- 
ture of  the  troubadours  and  proclaimed  the 
supremacy  of  French  among  the  Romance  lan- 
guages. Hanotaux,  Fagniez  and  Cheruel  ana- 
lyzed with  both  critical  erudition  and  patriotic 
pride  the  centralization  of  the  French  monarch}' 
by  the  great  statesmen  of  the  I7th  cen- 
tury. Lamartine,  in  a  work  which  rivalled 
Carlyle  in  the  field  of  literature  and  was  equally 
unscientific  as  history,  set  forth  with  fervid  ad- 
miration the  glories  of  the  French  Revolution, 
and  especially  the  exploits  of  the  Girondists. 
Mignet,  the  most  scholarly  French  historian 
in  the  first  half  of  the  19th  century,  made 
an  attack  on  the  Bourbon  Restoration  by  rep- 
resenting the  French  Revolution  as  the  neces- 
sary and  inevitable  outgrowth  of  the  tend- 
encies of  the  age  and  as  the  dawn  of  a  new 
and  better  era  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
Thiers,  while  critical  of  the  empire,  praised  the 
first  consul  as  the  saviour  of  France  and  of 
European  civilization.  Napoleon  was  defended 
in  'his  imperial  splendor  by  Masson,  Vandal  and 
Levy;  Vandal  representing  him  as  peace-loving 
and  goaded  to  war  by  English  jealous}',  and 
Levy  presenting  a  superhuman  and  faultless 
personality.  Thureau-Dangin,  while  deploring 
its  popular  origin,  appeared  as  the  historical 
apologist  of  the  "July  Monarchy.^'  La  Gorce 
dealt  with  the  ^'Second  Empire'^  as  an  apologist 
of  monarchy  and  clericalism,  if  not  of  the  per- 
sonality of  Napoleon  IIL  Ollivier  dwelt  with 
pride  upon  the  liberal  tendencies  of  the  last 
decade  of  the  Empire,  and  Hanotaux,  in  one 
of  the  finest  products  of  national  historiog- 
raphy in  France,  has  described  and  defended 
the  establishment  of  the  "Third  Republic.^'  Nor 
was  France  lacking  in  general  histories  written 
from  the  national  point  of  view.  Early  in  the 
19th  century  Sismondi  produced  the  first  de- 
tailed and  complete  history  of  France.  It  was 
written  from  the  standpoint  of  an  ardent  lib- 
eral who  castigated  kings  and  bishops  and 
lauded  the  liberal  tendencies  in  the  communes. 
But  Sismondi  was  a  Genevan  and  to  some  ex- 
tent a  representative  of  the  mild  rationalism  of 
Rousseau,  and  his  work  was  not  calculated  to 
arouse  intense  patriotic  enthusiasm.  Much  dif- 
ferent, except  in  its  liberalism,  was  the  brilliant 
work  of  Michelet,  which  was  not  only  a  great 

ycontribution  to  French  literature  but  to  the 
y  stimulation  of  patriotic  pride,  especially  on  the 
part  of  liberal  Frenchmen.  Henri  Martin's 
history  of  France  was  less  brilliantly  written 
than  Michelet's,  but  rested  on  sounder  scholar- 
ship and  for  a  half  century  has  remained  the 
popular  national  history  of  France  on  account 
of  its  logical  arrangement,  lucid  presentation 
and  its  central  tliemc  of  the  progressive  growth 
of  French  national  unity.  The  great  co-oper- 
ative work  edited  bv  Lavisse  belongs  to  the  field 
of  erudite  and  critical  rather  than  nationalistic 
historiography.  French  nationalism  was  greatlv 
stimulated  bv  the  sting  of  the  defeat  and  injus'- 
tices  of  1870.     \Yhile  the  scholarly  French  his- 


torians, such  as  Gorce  and  Sorel,  rhaintained  an 
impartiality  in  treating  of  the  war  of  1870, 
which  put  to  shame  the  fawning  apology  of 
Sybel,  there  was  a  great  outburst  of  nationalis- 
tic ardor  on  the  part  of  the  "super-patriots^^ 
among  their  countrymen.  These  tendencies 
found  expression,  above  all,  in  the  fiery 
speeches,  poetry  and  pamphlets  of  Paul  Derou- 
lede,  the  chief  of  the  "Ravanchards,"  and  in 
the  brilliant  polemics  and  eulogies  of  his  ad- 
mirer, that  ardent  Gallican  and  head  of  the 
League  of  Patriots,  Maurice  Barres,  whose  study 
of  French  history  has  convinced  him  that  "the 
French  make  war  as  a  religious  duty.  They 
were  the  first  to  formulate  the  idea  of  a  Holy 
War.  It  is  not  in  France  that  wars  are  entered 
upon  for  the  sake  of  spoil,  but  as  a  champion  in 
the  cause  of  God,  as  a  knight  upholding  jus-  , 
tice.»  -' 

England  did  not  begin  any  systematic  collec-  — 
tion  of  the  sources  of  its  national  history  until 
the  beginning  of  the  19th  century.     In  the  year 
1800  the  Record  Commission  was  created,  but 
no  real  historian  was  connected  with  its  labors 
until   Sir  James   Mackintosh  was   appointed  in 
1825.     In   1830  Harris   Nicolas  called  attention 
to  the  deplorable  condition  of  the  "sources^'  in 
England  and  his   criticism   led   to   the  creation 
of  a  new  and  more  active  and  critical  committee 
of  the  Record  Commission.     A  product  of  this 
improvement  was  the  edition  of  the  Parliamen- 
tary Writs  by  Palgrave.     No  systematic  activity 
in  the  collection  of  sources  began  until  after  the  » 
middle  of  the  century.     At  this  time,  William 
Stubbs,    the   greatest    of    English    mediaevalists 
before    Maitland   and   the   Anglicized   Russian,, 
Vinogradoff,  vigorously  criticized  the  work  of 
the    Record    Commission.     Shortly   afterwards, 
in  1857,  Lord  Romilly,  the  Keeper  of  the  Rolls, , 
was  able  to   secure   an  appropriation   from  the' 
government  to  publish  tihe   sources  of   English 
mediaeval  history  and  the  general  oversight  of 
the  project  was  conferred  upon  Duflus  Hardy, 
a  careful,   if  not  brilliant,  scholar.     The  work 
of   editing   these   sources   has   been   carried   on 
by   a   number   of   English  mediasvalists,   among 
them     Brewer,     Gairdner,     Canon     Robertson, 
Giles  and  Dimock.  but  far  the  greatest  figure 
was  the  English  Waitz,  Bishop  William  Stubbs  • 
(1825-1901).     For  more   than   a   quarter   of   a 
century  after  1863  he  gave  much  of  his  time  to 
this  work.     This  collection,  which  was  finished 
in  1896  in  two  hundred  and  forty-four  volumes, 
is  known  as  the  *  Chronicles  and  Memorials  of 
Great    Britain   and   Ireland   during   the    Middle' 
Agcs^      (^Rerum     Britannicarum     mcdii     aevi 
scriptores)     or,    more    briefly,     as    the     *  Rolls  ^ 
Series^   from  the  fact  of  its  publication  by  the' 
Master  of   the  Rolls.     It  is  the  official   British 
analogue  of  the   ^Monumenta^   and  the   ^Docu- 
ments    inedits.^     Less     pretentious     collections* 
have  been  provided  by  the  Camden  Society  aifci~~-^ 
the     Early     English     Texts     Society.       There 
should  also  be  mentioned  the  great  collection  of 
the   sources   of   English  legal   history  provided 
by  the   Selden   Society,   and  the  publication  of 
the    manuscript    records   of   important   voyages 
and  explorations  bj-  the  Hakluyt   Society. 

The  historiography  of  nationalism  has  not 
been  less  vigorous  in  England  than  in  Germany 
or  France. Liis  most  conspicuous  feature  has  been 
the  expansion  of  the  "Myth  Tcutonicus*'  rcgac^:- 
ing  the  political  superiority  of  the  Anglo-Saxon? 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


peoples,  which  was  so  popular  a  tenet  of  roman- 
ticism ami  had  been  so  fervidly  expounded 
by  Edmund  Burke.  It  rested  primarily  upon 
the  assumption  that  the  Teutonic  invaders  of 
England  had  made  a  clean  sweep  of  the  Briton 
and  Celtic  inhabitants  and  had  created  a  purely 
Germanic  England  in  culture  if  not  in  race. 
The  most  vigorous  and  the  earliest  statement 
of  this  view  appeared  in  Kemble's  *Thc  Saxons 
in  England,*  which  was  published  in  1849.  It 
not  only  taught  this  notion  to  Englishmen,  but 
was  widely  read  in  Germany  and  served  to  fur- 
nish the  German  nationalists  with  a  further 
basis  for  their  convictions  regarding  the  Ger- 
manic "mission,*  which  had  been  drawn  from 
their  own  mediaeval  sources.  Freeman  carried 
the  argument  still  further  in  his  'History  of 
the  Norman  Conquest,*  in  which  he  not  only 
accepted  the  Saxon  theory,  but,  being  an  ardent 
lover  of  liberty  like  Michelct,  espied  the 
real  foundations  of  political  liberty  in  the  Ger- 
manic folk-moot,  and  particularly  in  its  English 
manifestation.  This  myth,  dating  back  to  Thoy- 
ras  and  Montesquieu,  so  thoroughly  punctured 
by  Coulangcs,  has  been  one  of  the  most  persist- 
ent and  pernicious  sources  of  error  which  have 
come  down  from  a  pre-anthropological  stage  in 
historical  studies.  Even  the  calm  and  cautious 
Bishop  Stubbs  and  the  charming  John  Richard 
Green  were  also  seduced  by  this  fiction  of  a 
Teutonic  England,  which  was  to  be  diallenged 
by  Secbohm  and  modified  by  Maitland  and 
A'inogradoff.  The  greatest  popular  emotional 
impulse  toward  this  Teutonic  interpretation 
came  from  the  notorious  work  of  the  poet-his- 
torian, Charles  Kingsley,  on  'The  Rornan  and 
the  Teuton,*  which  was  first  published  in  1864. 
Highly  entertaining  but  almost  wholly  un- 
scientific and  non-historical,  it  did  more  to 
pervert  the  interpretation  of  early  mediseval 
history  than  any  other  book  of  its  time.  He 
idealized  the  "young  and  virile**  Teutonic 
"Forest  Children**  with  the  ardor  of  a  Las 
Casas,  and  set  them  in  marked  and  flattering 
contrast  with  the  morally  and  physically  de- 
cadent Romans  of  the  "Dying  Empire,**  and  re- 
joiced in  the  destruction  of  the  latter  by  the 
"Human  Deluge**  from  the  North.  It  is  a 
sufificicnt  commentary  upon  the  accuracy  of  his 
work  to  note  that  the  labors  of  scholarly 
mediaevalists  for  the  last  generation  have 
chiefly  centered  about  the  rejection  of  everyone 
of  his  main  theses.  The  book,  however,  gained 
a  great  popular  vogue  and  no  Englishman  could 
read  it  without  desiring  to  trace  his  ancestry 
back  to  Arminius  and  Alaric.  Passing  from 
the  Middle  Ages,  where  the  national 
grandeur  of  Britain  had  been  laid  by  the 
Teuton,  the  most  intensely  nationalistic  of 
English  historians,  James  Anthony  Froude, 
described  the  glories  of  the  English  re- 
volt from  Rome.  Carlyle  lauded  the  virtues  of 
Cromwell  and  his  associates  of  the  Common- 
wealth period.  The  Whig  apologists,  Mackin- 
tosh, Hallam,  and  above  all,  Macaulay,  de- 
scribed the  salvation  of  the  world's  liberties  by 
the_  "Glorious  Revolution*^  of  16R9.  Macaulay's 
'History'  is  the  English  counterpart  of  Treit- 
sdike  and  Michelet,  and  marks  the  most  bril- 
liant of  English  contributions  to  historical  lit- 
erature, as  well  as  a  valuable,  though  prejudiced 
bodj'  of  historical  knowledge.  Lecky's  study 
of    18th    century    England    could    scarcely    be 


called  nationalistic  on  account  of  its  impartial- 
ity, but  Napier  praised  English  prowess  in  the 
Peninsular  War  in  a  work  which  was  as  frank 
an  adulation  of  war  as  a  process  in  human  so- 
ciety as  was  Bernhardi's  work  a  half  century 
later.  Finally,  Seeley,  an  example  of  both  na- 
tionalism and  erudition,  wrote  with  restrained 
pride  of  the  development  of  the  British  Em- 
pire in  his  'Expansion  of  England'  and  'Growth 
of  British  Policy.*  Not  only  was  Seeley  a  na- 
tionalist, but  along  with  Freeman  he  was 
chiefly  responsible  for  turning  English  historiog- 
raphy iiito  the  narrow  and  unnatural  channels 
of  political  history.  The  growth  of  English 
national  enthusiasm,  which  accompanied  the 
work  of  Cecil  Rhodes  and  the  Boer  War,  did 
not  fail  to  produce  its  nationalistic  literature, 
which  was  as  far  removed  from  the  scholarly 
grasp  of  Seeley  as  was  the  attitude  of  Bern- 
hardi  from  that  of  Sybel.  Bernhardi  found  his 
English  counterpart  in  Prof.  J.  A.  Cramb,  who 
detected  in  England's  past  wars  the  governing 
principle  "of  that  higher  power  of  heroism 
which  transcends  reason.**  Curiously  enough, 
as  it  had  fallen  to  a  renegade  Englishman, 
H.  S.  Chamberlain,  to  arrange  the  apotheosis  of 
"Germania,**  so  it  required  an  American,  Homer 
Lea,  to  link  up  the  future  salvation  of  the 
world  with  the  necessity  of  the  universal 
triumph  of  "Britannia,**  through  the  strengthen- 
ing and  preservation  of  "the  scarlet  circle  of 
power  that  the  Saxon  has  marked  around  the 
earth  as  has  no  other  race  before  him.** 

Italy  shares  the  double  honor  of  having  been 
the  first  nation  to  provide  a  complete  collection 
of  its  sources  of  national  history  and  of  having 
produced  the  most  indefatigable  of  all  editors 
in  Lodovico  Antonio  Muratori  (1672-1750). 
From  1723  until  his  death  in  1750  he  brought 
together  in  the  25  folio  volumes  of  the  'Rerum 
italicarum  scriptores*  nearly  all  of  the  extant 
sources  of  Italian  history.  So  thorough  was  his 
work  that  it  has  only  been  deemed  neces- 
sary in  recent  years  to  undertake  a  new  edition 
of  his  collection,  which  has  been  in  progress 
since  1900  under  the  supervision  of  Giosue 
Carducci  and  Vitorio  Fiorini.  It  is  scarcely  to 
be  doubted  that  the  new  edition  is  quite  as 
much  a  sublimation  of  patriotic  impulses  as  an 
enterprise  entered  upon  in  the  interests  of  his- 
torical scholarship. 

While  the  national  narrative  history,  like  the 
collection  of  sources,  dates  back  to  a  more  re- 
mote period  in  Itajy  than  in  the  other  states  of 
Europe,  it  began  in  its  modern  phase  with 
Botta's  'History  of  Italy  during  the  Revolu- 
tionary and  Napoleonic  Wars,*  whidi  breathed 
forth  the  ardent  liberalism  which  found  ex- 
pression in  the  politics  of  the  period  in  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  Carbonari.  Coletta  condemned 
the  corruption  and  incapacity  of  Bourbon  abso- 
lutism in  Naples.  Troya  and  Tosti  surveyed 
the  history  of  mediaeval  Italv  for  evidence  to 
support  their  plea  for  papal  leaders'hip  in  Ital- 
ian unity,  while  D'Azcglio_  turned  to  contempo- 
rary Italy  to  prove  papal  incapacity  and  to  call 
attention  to  the  promise  of  leadership  in  the 
House  of  Savoy.  More  recently  Luzio,  De- 
Caesare  and  Chiala  have  dealt  with  the  period 
of  the  "Risorgimento**  atid  establishment  of  na- 
tional imity,  but  the  Italian  enthusiasm  over 
their  attainment  of  national  independence  and 
unity  has  scarcely  cooled  sufficiently  to  find  his- 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


tory  an  effective  method  of  expression ;  up  to 
the  present  time  it  has  been  recounted  chiefly 
in  the  patriotic  poetry  of  Giosue  Carducci  and 

•Gabriele  D'Annunzio. 

The  first  collection  of  Spanish  sources  was 
not  the  work  of  Spaniards,  but  of  the  itinerant 

V  English  scholar,  Robert  Beal  (d.  1601),  who 
published  his  ^Rerum  hispanicarum  scrip- 
tores^  in  1579-81.  Nearly  two  centuries  later 
J.  A.  C.  Bertodano  produced  his  extensive  col- 
lection of  sources  on  diplomatic  history  (1740- 
52).  The  great  national  collection  of  sources, 
however,  was  not  begun  until  the  middle  of  the 
19th    century    when    Pidal,    Salva    and    others 

,  started  the    'Coleccion  de  documentos  ineditos 

^para  la  historia  de  Espagna,'  which  was  com- 
pleted in  112  volumes  (1842-95).  In  addition, 
the  Royal  Academy  of  History  at  Madrid  has 
been  publishing  source  material  since  1851  in 
the  collection  entitled  ^Memorial  historica  es- 
paiiol.^  Spain  found  her  great  national  his- 
torian in  Modesto  Lafuente  (1806-66).  His 
monumental     *  Historia    general     de     Espafia,* 

» which  was  intended  to  be  a  continuation  of  Ma- 
riana, appeared  in  30  volumes  from  1850-67,  and 
was  continued  after  his  death  by  J.  Valera. 

The  sources  of  Austrian  history  were  not 
only    collected    in    the    German    ^Monumenta,' 

,  where  the  great  scholar,   Theodor  Sickel,   ren- 

'dered  valuable  editorial  assistance,  but  also  in 
separate  national  collections,  the  'Pontes  rerum 
Austriacarum,'  published  since  1849  by  the  Vi- 
enna Academy,  and  the  new  edition  of  Boh- 
mer's  *Regesta  imperii, >  edited  by  Picker  since 
1877  at  Innsbruck.  The  great  national  narra- 
tive history  of  Austria  was  Arneth's  monu- 
mental work  on  the  times  of  Maria  Theresa, 
while  Klopp  has  recalled  the  imperial  heroes  of 
the  Thirty  Years'  War  and  conducted  an  attack 
on  Prederick  the  Great. 

In  Bohemia,  Czech  nationalism  did  not  initi- 
ate interest  in  history  as  in  other  European 
states,  but  rather  history  aroused  nationalism 
in  the  first  instance.  To  the  vigorous  patriot- 
ism of  P.  Palacky's  < History  of  Bohemia,* 
more  than  to  any  other  source,  the  modern 
Czech  national  spirit  owes  its  origin.  The 
sources  of  Bohemian  history  have  been  collected 
by  the  greatest  of  Bohemian  historical  scholars, 
Anton  Gindley,  and  are  entitled  'Monumenta 
Historise  Bohemica>  (1864-90).  The  Hunga- 
rian government  has  been  publishing  the  <Mon- 
umenta  Hungariae  historica*  at  Budapest  since 
1857,  and  Hungary  has  found  in  Pessler  and  his 
continuators  its  national  historians.  Poland  has 
published  two  large  collections  of  sources,  and 
Lelewel  and  Szajnocha  have  reminded  the  Poles 
of  their  ancient  splendor  and  power.  The  ob- 
scurantism of  Czardom  has  prevented  the  de- 
velopment of  historical  scholarship  in  Russia. 
a  loss  to  Russia  which  can  be  appreciated  by  a 
survey  of  the  great  work  of  the  exile,  Vinogra- 
doff.  Karamsin's  antiquated  history  presents 
an  apology  for  the  absolutism  and  Oriental  cul- 
ture of  the  early  czars,  while  the  more  recent 
and  scholarly  work  of  Soloviev  defends  the  in- 
troduction of  Western  culture  by  Peter  the 
Great.  Further,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
both  Belgium  and  Holland  are  represented  by 
extensive  collections  of  sources  and  able  na- 
tional historians.  Belgian  enthusiasm  for  the 
collection  of  sources  of  national  historv  began 
with  the  attainment  of  independence  in   1830. 


The  great  national  collection  is  the  Collection 
de  chroniques  Beiges  inedites,*  published  in^ 
111  volumes  at  Brussels  since  1836.  The  'So- 
ciety d'emulation  de  Bruges,*  published  be- 
tween 1839  and  1864  the  56  volumes  of  the 
'Recueil  de  chroniques,  chartes,  et  autres  docu- 
ments concernant  I'histoire  et  les  antiquites  de 
la  Plandre  occidentale.*  In  addition  Wauters 
has  edited  the  great  collection  of  communal 
charters  and  Gachard  has  edited  the  foreign 
archives  of  the  period  since  the  I5th  century. 
The  great  Catholic  and  Belgian  counter-blast 
to  Motley's  work,  as  well  as  to  that  of  Prin- 
sterer,  was  contained  in  the  work  of  Lettenhove 
on  the  16th  century.  He  condemned  William 
the  Silent  and  his  Protestant  supporters  and 
defended  the  position  of  Spain  and  the  Catholic 
party.  His  somewhat  chauvinistic  and  ob- 
scurantic  work  has  been  superseded  by  the 
admirable  critical  works  of  Predericq  and 
Pirenne.  While  Holland  has  not  provided  as 
complete  a  collection  of  national  sources  as 
Belgium,  the  Historical  Society  of  Utrecht  has 
been  publishing  important  sources  since  1863  — 
the  'Werken  uitgegeven  door  het  Historisch 
Genootschap  te  Utrecht* — and  Prinsterer  has 
edited  the  voluminous  archives  of  the  House  of 
Orange.  _  In  1902  a  royal  commission  of  the 
most  eminent  Dutch  historians  was  appointed 
to  arrange  for  the  systematic  publication  of  the 
manuscript  sources  of  the  history  of  Holland. 
The  most  enthusiastic  Dutch  nationalistic  nar- 
rative history  was  that  by  Prinsterer  in  which 
Protestantism  and  the  House  of  Orange  received 
their  vindication  and  eulogy.  This  has  now 
been  rendered  obsolete  by  the  scholarly  mono- 
graphs of  Pruin,  the  greatest  of  Dutch  his- 
torians, and  by  the  accurate  and  well-balanced 
general  history  of  Blok.  The  Scandinavian 
nations  have  not  been  unproductive  in  the  field 
of  national  historiography.  The  sources  have 
been  collected  in  the  following  series :  the 
'Scriptores  rerum  Danicarum  medii  aevi,*  edited 
by  Langebek  and  his  successors;  the  'Diplo- 
matarium  Norvegicum,*  edited  by  Lange;  and 
the  *Scriptores  rerum  Suecicarum,*  edited  by 
Geijer  and  his  associates.  The  nationalistic  his- 
torical narrative  was  introduced  in  Denmark 
by  Worsaae  ;  in  Norway  by  Keyser  and  Munch ; 
and  in  Sweden  by  Geijer,  Carlson  and  Fryxell. 
These  works  have  been  succeeded  by  the  more 
recent  and  scholarly  national  histories  of  Steen- 
strup  on  Denmark;  Sars  on  Norway;  and 
Hjarne  on  Sweden.  If  there  were  available 
space  it  would  be  easy  to  demonstrate  the  very 
great,  if  not  determining,  influence  of  the  study 
of  the  glories  of  their  national  past  upon  the 
rise  of  the  national  aspirations  of  the  Balkan 
peoples  since  1820.  The  well-known  influence 
of  Alexandru  Xenopol's  ^Histoire  des  Rou- 
mains  de  la  Dacie  Trajane*  upon  Roumanian 
nationalism  is  but  a  typical  illustration  of  the 
fertility  of  such  an  investigation. 

Surely,  no  account  of  the  interrelation  of 
nationality  and  historiography  in  modern  times 
would  be  complete  without  some'  reference "fe^ 
the  national  historiography  of  Judaism  and 
Zionism.  The  rise  of  Jewish  nationalism  in 
the  last  century  was  intimately  related  to  the 
general  development  of  nationality  in  Europe 
during  that  period.  This  stimulated  Jewish 
national  spirit,  both  by  the  direct  influence  of 
imitation  and  through   the  persecution  of   the 


240 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


Jews,  as  a  result  of  the  irrowing  chauvinism 
throughout  continental  Europe  after  1870.  The 
relation  of  this  growth  of  Jewish  national  senti- 
ment to  the  remarkable  development  of  the  in- 
terest of  the  Jews  in  their  national  history  is 
readily  apparent.  Historical  societies  were 
formed  in  all   the  leading  modern   states  —  the 

,  *'Societe  des  etudes  juives,^*  founded  in  1880; 
the  Historical  Commission  of  the  "Union  of 
German- Jewish    Congregations,"    appointed    in 

^  1885;  "The  American  Jewish  Historical  So- 
ciety, >>  created  in  1892;  and  "The  English  Jew- 
ish Historical  Society,"  founded  in  1895.  These 
societies  have  done  valuable  work  in  compiling 
sources  of  Jewish  history  and  in  arousing  in- 
terest in  its  study.  Especially  to  be  noted  is 
the  •  Regesten  zur  Geschichte  der  Juden  im 
frankischen  und  deutschen  Reiche  bis  zum 
Jahre  1273,'  published  by  the  German  Jewish 
Historical  Commission  since  1887.  Including 
an  account  of  the  Jewish  persecutions  in  the 
mediaeval  period,  it  has  tended  to  arouse  their 
national  resentment  at  past,  as  well  as  present, 
oppression.  The  Jews  have  also  been  stirred 
by  the  work  of  a  great  national  historian,  Hein- 

4  rich  Graetz  (1817-91).  Isaac  M.  Jost  (1793- 
1860),  in  his  < History  of  the  Israelites,*  and 
his  *  History  of  Judaism,'  had  surveyed  the 
history  of  the  Jews,  but  he  was  too  liberal, 
rationalistic  and  impartial  a  writer  to  serve  as 
a  truly  national  historian.  Widely  different 
was  the  work  of  Graetz,  sometimes  called  the 
Jewish  Treitschke.  Conservative  and  generally 
orthodox,  and  fired  with  a  warm  enthusiasm 
for  the  past  and  future  ot  his  people,  Graetz 
traced  in  an  eloquent  manner  the  history  of 
the  Jews  from  their  origins  to  1848,  laj-ing 
special  stress  upon  their  literary  and  spiritual 
development,  in  other  words,  upon  the  elements 
which  contributed  the  most  to  the  development 
and  persistence  of  their  national  culture. 
Graetz's  work  was  especiallv  in  line  with  the 
development  of  "Zionism,''  for  he  insisted  that 
the  true  Messiah  was  the  national  spirit  of  the 
Jewish  people  and  he  discouraged  further  delay 
through  awaiting  the  coming  of  a  personal 
Messiah.  In  addition  to  the  general  history  of 
Graetz,  there  should  be  mentioned  the  many 
histories  dealing  in  a  comprehensive  fashion 
with  the  history  of  the  Jews  in  the  different 
European  states. 

In  connection  with  this  brief  summary  of  the 
reaction  of  nationalism  upon  historiography  in 
Europe  some  passing  reference  should  be  made 
to  the  growth  and  accumulation  of  archival 
material  and  its  accessibility  to  students.  The 
development  of  the  national  states  and  their  ad- 
ministrative bureaucracies  led  to  a  great  amount 
of  administrative  "red  tape"  and  to  the  growth 
of  fi;:ed  diplomatic  correspondence.  From 
these  sources  a  rich  storehouse  of  historical 
material  had  accumulated  in  the  national,  eccle- 
siastical and  private  archives  by  1800.  Before 
theu  could  be  generally  useful  to  historians, 
however,  the  sources  in  the  archives  had  to  be 
classified  and  centralized  and  made  public  to 
creditable  historians.  In  the  matter  of  central- 
ization  and   classification   of   archival   material 

•  France  has  taken  the  lead,  due  chiefly  to  the 
large  number  of  highly-trained  archivists  pro- 
vided liy  L'ficole  des  Chart es.  At  the  present 
time    only    England    is    exceedingly   backward 

*  among  \ho  European  states  in  providing  for  a 
systematic  rarangement  and  classification  of  its 


archival  material.  In  the  same  way  that  na- 
tional pride  and  competition  led  to  the  compila- 
tion of  the  great  source  collections  of  national 
history,  it  forced  the  several  European  states  at 
various  dates  during  the  19th  century  to  open 
the  national  archives  to  historical  scholars.  In 
addition,  the  liberal-minded  Pope,  Leo  XIII, 
opened  the  Vatican  archives  in  1881  and  secu- 
lar scholars  for  the  first -tttne  had  the  privilege 
of  examining  the  treasures  that  Baronius  had 
made  use  of.  Even  at  the  present  time,  how- 
ever, complete  freedom  is  not  accorded  any- 
where in  the  use  of  archival  material,  scholars 
being  excluded  from  the  more  recent  documents. 
For  instance,  the  Vatican  archives  are  accessible  • 
only  to  1815,  those  of  France  to  1830,  and  those 
of  England  to  1867.  In  America,  scholars  like 
Gaillard  Hunt  are  laboring  to  put  the  archival 
material  of  the  United  States  upon  the  same 
high  plane  that  it  has  reached  in  most  European 
countries.  _ 

The  United  States  has  never  provided  a/ 
great  official  collection  of  the  sources  of  its  na- 
tional history  comparable  to  those  prepared  by 
the  European  countries.  This  has  been  due  in 
part  to  the  particularism  inherent  in  the  Amer- 
ican Federal  system  and  in  part  to  the  fact  that 
the  American  central  government  has  been  too 
much  absorbed  in  the  details  of  routine  legisla- 
tion to  be  able  to  concentrate  its  attention  on 
the  furthering  of  intellectual  interests.  The 
true  American  counterpart  of  the  movement  of 
collecting  sources  of  national  history,  which 
was  associated  in  Europe  with  the  names  of 
Pertz,  Guizot,  Nicolas,  Hardy  and  Stubb.s,  is 
to  be  found  in  the  rather  pathetic  attempt  of 
Peter  Force  (1790-1868)  to  obtain  adequate 
government  support  for  his  "American 
Arcliives,"  which  were  designed  to  constitute 
a  complete  collection  of  the  sources  of  the  his-  ' 
tory  of  the  United  Slates  from  the  period  of 
discovery  to  the  formation  of  the  constitution. 
Its  psychological  and  historical  affinity  with 
the  European  movement  is  clearly  indicated 
by  Force's  statement  of  his  aims.  "The  under- 
taking in  which  we  have  embarked  is,  emphati- 
cally, a  national  one ;  national  in  its  scope  and 
object,  its  end  and  aim."  After  a  painful  proc- 
ess of  protracted  importuning.  Force  received 
a  Federal  appropriation  which  allowed  him  to 
begin  publishing  his  "Archives"  in  1837,  but  the, 
government  aid  was  soon  withdrawn  and  the 
published  material  was  but  an  insignificant  frac- 
tion of  what  it  had  been  planned  to  include. 
Owing  to  the  fact  that  American  historical 
scholarship  was  then  a  generation  behind  that 
of  Europe,  Force  was  primarily  a  hard-work- 
ing antiouarian  compiler  rather  than  a  scholarly 
editor  like  Pertz,  W'aitz,  Mignet,  Guerard, 
Hardy  or  Stubbs,  and  the  national  loss  from 
the  cessation  of  his  work  was  infinitely  less  than 
would  have  been  occasioned  bv  a  discontinuance 
of  the  "Rolls  Series,"  the  "Monumenta"  or  the 
"Documents  Inedits."  The  collections  which 
have  been  made  have  been  primarily  the 
result  of  the  enterprise  of  individuals, 
publishing  companies  and  the  historical 
societies  of  the  ■  several  commonwealths. 
The  process  began  w'ith  the  publication 
oT~  Jared  Sparks'  writings  of  ~\Vashington ' 
between  1834  and"lS38.  The  most  ambitious  at- 
tempt to  make  a  thorough  collection  was  the 
work  of  Mr.  Hubert  Howe  Bancroft  in  the  last  '^ 
half  of  the  I9nrceritur>',  in  his  gathering  of  the 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


241 


sources  of  the  history  of  the  Pacific  States.  Un- 
fortunatelj-,  he  did  not  follow  the  example  of 
Stein  and  secure  the  aid  of  a  Pertz,  but  trusted 
to  his  own  untrained  guidance  the  execution  of 
the  project,  with  the  result  that  the  work 
lacked  in  critical  scholarship  and  careful  edit- 
'ing.  An  incomparably  more  scholarly  work  was 
the  co-oj)erative  history  of  the  colonization  of 
America,  edited  by  Justin  Winsor,  but,  though 
this  contained  much  source  material,  it  was 
primarily  a  narrative  work  giving  a  critical  re- 
view of  the  sources  rather  than  including  them. 
Parallel  with  this  movement  went  the  publica- 
tion of  source  material  by  the  various  common- 

•  v.-ealths  in  the  vast  collections  of  colonial  rec- 
ords and  archives,  but  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases  these  collections  were  prepared  by  eru- 
dite antiquarians  rather  than  by  men  trained 
as  critical  historical  editors,  and  there  was  no 
uniformity  in  the  methods  employed.  Some  of 
these  state  collections  have,  however,  been  of 
a  very  high  order,  the  "most  notable  being, 
perhaps,  the  extensive  series  dealing  with  the 
exploration  and  settlement  of  the  middle  West 
by  Reuben  G.  Thwaites  of  Wisconsin.  Another 
mode  of  collecting  sources  was  exTubited  in  the 
editions  of  the  messages  and  papers  of  the 
presidents  and  the  writings  of  the  chief  states- 

■.  men  by  numerous  scholars,  which  have  varied 
widely  in  quality,  reaching  the  highest  level  in 
W.  C.  Ford's  *  Writings  of  Washington'  ;  Gail- 
lard  Hunt's  'Writings  of  James  Madisoji*  aild 
P.  L.  Ford's  *  Writings  of  Jeftersoo.'  The 
United  States  has  not  been  lacking  in  editorial 
ability  of  the  highest  order,  for  in  Worthington 

•  C.  Ford,  James  Franklin  Jameson,  Paul  Leices- 
ter P'ord  and  Gaillard  Hunt  are  to  be  found  the 
equals  of  Pertz,  Waitz,  Guizot  or  Stubbs.  The 
great  defect  has  been  the  lack  of  concerted 
planning  and  continued  and  adequte  govern- 
ment  aid.     Promising   beginnings   in   the   right 

•  direction  are  to  be  seen  in  W.  C.  Ford's  edi- 
tion of  the  'Journals  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress' and  the  scholarly  products  of  the  Car- 
negie Institution  under  Dr.  Jameson's  direc- 
tion. John  Bassett  Moore  has  labored  with 
almost  Benedictine  patience  and  productivity 
in    the    preparation    of    his    monumental    series 

/dealing  with  the  documentary  history  of  diplo- 
macy'. There  also  should  be  mentioned  the  mon- 
umental collection  of  sources  dealing  with  the 
history  of  labor  in  America  which  has  been 
prepared  By  Professor  Commons  and  his  asso- 
ciates._  Miss  Adelaide  Hasse  has  bcgim  an  in- 
valuaBle  series  of  volumes  describing  and  classi- 
fying the  sources  for  American  economic  and 
social  histor>'  which  are  available  in  the  public 
docufirents  of  the  various  commonwealths.  On 
the  whole,  however,  the  Ignited  States  has  been 
incomparably  dcnnquent  in  the  thorough  and 
scholarly   collection   of   the   sour^res  of   its   na- 

•  tional  history,  and  it  cannot  seek  refuge  be- 
hind any  assertion  that  this  has  been  due  to  a 
lack  of  rabid  nationalistic  emotions. 

If  this  countr>-  has  not  kept  abreast  of  Eu- 
ropean development  in  the  editorial  aspect  of 
national  historiography,  it  can  lay  claim  to  hav- 
ing produced  historians  enthused  with  as  ardent 
a  patriotism  as  fired  a  Treitschkc,  a  Michelet  or 
a  Froude.  Nationalism  in  American  Jiistoriog- 
raphy  has,  nat'u rally,  centred  matnTv  aTiou't  the 
romantic  period  of  colonization  and  the  strug- 
gle for  American  independence,  and  American 

VOL.  14  —  16 


historians  have  surrounded  this  period  with  the 
halo  given  to  the  early  national  history  of  Ger- 
many and  France  by  Johannes  Miiller  and 
Chateaubriand.  The  chief  figure  in  the  crea- 
tion of  this  national  epic  of  migration  and  de- 
liverance was  George  Bancroft,  whose  early 
years  fell  in  that  period  of  national  bumptious-  ' 
ness  and  florid  democracy  in  the  "thirties"  and 
"forties."  ToBg^croi'i.  the  history  of  the 
formation  (Tf^lhc  American  Republic  was  no 
m63esf  seculaT'achievement  of  ordinary  mor- 
tals, but  a  veritable  *.£neid  in  which  Augustus 
was  replaced  by  Washington  and  which  ex- 
hibited in  its  succession  of  scenes  "the  rnoye- 
ment  of  the  divine  power  which  gives  unity  to 
the  universe,  "and  order  and  connection  to 
events."  His  history  of  the  L^nited  States 
through  the  period  of  the  Federal  Constitutional 
Convention  represented  the  process  of  coloniza- 
tion as  the  flight  of  brave  spirits  from  oppres- 
sion, characterized  the  American  Revolution  as 
a  crusade  of  wholly  virtuous  and  disinterested 
paTnols  in  behalf  of  the  liberties  of  civilized  hu- 
manity, described  the  American  constitution  as 
the  creation  of  a  group  of  "unfque  mental  giants, 
never  before  equalled  and  not  to  be  matched  at 
any  later  epoch,  and  regarded  their  work  as 
even  more  notable  than  its  makers.  The  pa- 
thetic inaccuracy  of  all  of  his  major  premises 
can  only  be  appreciated  by  a  careful  perusal  o-f 
the  scholarly  treatment  of  the  same  topics  Ijy 
Beer,  Van  Tyne,  AI.  C.  Tyler,  Osgood,  Alvord, 
Andi^ews,  Fisher,  Farrand  and  Beard,  and  the 
damage  done  to  proper  perspective  in  American 
history-  by  his  works  has  been  almost  incalcula- 
ble and  irreparable.  The  myth  was  perpetuated 
in  Palfrey's  long  Puritan  apology  and  was 
repeated  in  a  less  vigorous  form  in  Air.  Lodge's 
discussion  of  the  English  colonies  in  America. 
From  his  pride  in  American  exploits  in  behalf 
of  liberty  and  democracy,  Alotley  was  encour- 
aged to  study  the  analogous  movement  among 
the  Dutch,  when  they  rebelled  against  Spanish 
tyranny  and  established  a  republic.  Francis 
Parkman,  turning  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  pho- 
bia' of  Bancroft,  first  gave  full  credit  to  the 
work  of  France  in  colonizing  the  New  World. 
He  found  that  the  record  of  heroism  had  not 
been  wholly  monopolized  by  the  English  and 
German  colonists.  While  Parkman  had  turned 
his  attention  to  the  French  in  the  North  and 
West,  William  H.  Prescott  found  his  theme  in 
the  conquest  and  colonization  of  Central  and 
South  America  by  the  Spanish,  and  in  a  bril- 
liant description  of  the  splendor  of  the  native 
American  civilizations  of  Mexico  and  Peru. 
Mahan,  enthused  by  the  exploits  of  the  small 
American  navy  in  the  wars  of  the  Revolution 
and  1812,  was  encouraged  to  make  a  study  of 
the  influence  of  naval  supremacy  upon  the  his-  < 
lory  of  the  past.  Few  works  have  been  more 
influential  in  stimulating  the  disastrous  growth 
of  modern  armaments.  The  period  of  cement- 
ing the  national  union  through  th^  efforts  of  the 
Federalist?  was  glorified  in  the  works  of  HIl- 
dreth  and  John  Church  Hamilton,  and  the  bfess- 
ings  of  the  "pure"  democracy  of  the  Jacksonian 
epoch  were  set  forth  in  the  essays  and  addresses 
of  Bancroft,  who  believed  that  he  detected  the 
very  ^'voice  of  God"  in  the  acclaim  of  Jackson's 
followers.  Roosevelt  described  the  process 
of  American  expansToiT  westward  with  the  buoy- 
ant and  ill-concealed  pride  of  an  admirer  of  the 


242 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


West  and  an  ardent  patriot  and  national  im- 
perialist. Von  Hoist  beheld  in  the  struggle 
over  slavery  one  "more  great  episode  in  thai 
eternal  conflict  between  righteousness  and 
iniquity.  Professor  Burgess  saw  in  the  suc- 
cess of  the  North  in  the  Civil  War,  not  only  a 
justification  of  his  own  nationalistic  political 
philosophy,  but  also  a  sure  manifestation  of 
Teutonic  genius  in  the  field  of  political  unifica- 
tion and  organization.  On  the  whole,  however, 
by  the  time  that  the  achievcrnents  of  the  Civil 
War  and  Reconstruction  periods  had  come  to 
be  subjects  for  historical  analysis  the  objective 
scholarship  of  the  critical  and  erudite  school  had 
begun  to  prevail  and  the  "American  epic" 
passed,  to  be  preserved  only  in  the  school  texts 
of  succeeding  generations.  The  task  of 
rationalizing  the  "Bancroftian  epic'*  and  adapt- 
ing it  to  the  prevailing  tendencies  of  the  latter 
part  of  the  19th  century  fell  to  the  philos- 
opher-historian, John  Fiske  (1842-1901).  By 
his  amiable  SpenTerian  rationalism  and  his 
eulogy-  of  the  rise  of  the  middle  class  he  best 
summed  up  the  prevailing  spirit  of  the  educated 
Americans  of  his  time,  and  by  his  lively  and 
attractive  style  and  his  primary  concern  with 
the  period  of  discovery,  colonization  and  revo- 
lution he  attracted  a  following  which  probably 
entitled  him  to  the  position  of  the  popular 
national  historian  of  tlie  last  generation.  He 
was  the  prophet  of  the  new  era  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  Anglo-American  relations  which  re- 
placed the  Puritan  and  American  epic  of  Ban- 
croft by  an  account  of  the  rise  and  triumph 
of  the  middle  class  in  both  England  and 
America — **an  epic  of  the  English-speaking 
Peoples.''     He  was  as  fully  convinced  as  Bur 


He  pictured  it  as  the  work  of  Whigs  on  both 
sides  of  t*he  Atlantic  in  the  heroic  effort  to 
check  and  crush  the  autocratic  tendencies  of  a 
Tory  squirearchy  and  the  unconstitutional 
tryanny  of  a  "German  King,"  and  to  preserve 
for  the  world  the  liberties  embodied  in  the 
Bill  of  Rights.  He  dwelt  with  pride  upon  the 
establishment  of  the  American  Federal  Repub- 
lic and  regarded  it  as  the  great  contribution  or 
the  Western  Hemisphere  to  the  solution  of 
political  problems,  by  reconciling  the  liberty  of 
the  New  England  town-meeting  with  the  exist- 
ence of  large  political  aggregates.  He  con- 
templated with  unmixed  pleasure  the  progress 
of  the  middle  class  in  its  political  and  economic 
conquest  of  the  American  continent  in  the  19th 
century,  and,  just  before  his  death  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  20th,  he  was  deeply  gratified  to  see 
his  own  country  at  last  assume  its  part  of  the 
"white  man's  burden"  by  the  retention  of  the 
Philippines.  Not  at  all  a  militarist,  he  looked 
upon  this  as  a  most  significant  step  in  that  pro- 
cess of  bringing  the  world  under  the  peaceful 
dominion  of  "the  two  great  branches  of  the 
English  race  which  have  the  mission  of  estab- 
lishing throughout  the  larger  part  of  the  earth 
a  higher  civilization  and  a  more  permanent 
political  order  than  anv  that  has  gone  before."  -. 
Even  the  more  progressive  Latin  American  ^ 
states  have  begun  to  produce  extensive  collec- 
tions of  the  sources  of  their  national  history. 
The  ^Documentos  para  la  Historia  Argentina,* 
which  have  been  edited  by  L.  M.  Torres  and 
the  faculty  of  philosophy  and  letters  of  the 
National  University  of  Buenos  Aires  since 
191]L>e  a  typical  example  of  this  process. 
y-    The  net  result  of  the  growth  of  nationality 


ge§s   of   the   supreme   political   capacity   of   the^^nd    of    nationalism    upon    historiography    has 


Teutonic  branch  of  the  "Aryans."  He  held 
that  the  first  instance  of  self-government  in 
recorded  history  was  to  be  seen  in  the  Teutonic 
village-community,  which  was  an  "inheritance 
from  pre-historic  Aryan  antiquity,''  and  he  be- 
lieved that  "American  history  descends  in  un- 
broken continuity  from  the  days  when  stout 
Arminius  in  the  forests  of  northern  Germany 
successfully  defied  the  might  of  imperial  Rome." 
Fiske,  however,  stressed  the  element  of  liberty^ 
as  the  surest  criterion  of  political  capacity 
rather  than  the  aspect  of  order  and  authority 
which  found  favor  with  Burgess.  England 
under  Gladstone  seemed  far  better  adapted 
.  than  Germany  under  Bismarck_  for  furnishing 
an  edifying  example  of  the  attainment  of  com- 
plete political  liberty,  and  the  then  popular 
theory  of  a  wholly  Teutonic  England  was  an 
ethnic  argument  in  favor  of  such  an  under- 
taking. Therefore,  instead  of  conducting  the 
muse  of  liberty  directly  from  the  "German 
forest  primeval"  to  the  Federal  Constitutional 
Convention  of  1787,  Fiske  arranged  a  detour  in 
her  migration  to  the  new  world  whic^h  would 
guide  her  to  America  by  the  way  of  the 
"Glorious  Revolution  of  1688,"  in  which,  as  the 
work  of  the  English  "bourgeoisie,"  "freedom 
both  political  and  religious  was  established  on 
so  firm  a  foundation  as  never  again  to  be 
shaken,  never  again  with  impunity  to  be 
threatened,  so  long  as  the  lanL,'uage  of  Locke 
and  Milton  and  Sydney  shall  remain  a  living 
speech  on  the  lips  of  men."  Working  hand  in 
hand  with  George  Otto  Trevclyan,  he  tried  to 
show  how  the  American  Revolution  was  but 
the    perfect    fulfilment    of    the    spirit    of    1688^ 


been  greatly  varied  and  a  mixed  blessing.  Its 
fortunate  results  have  been,  above  all,  the  pro- 
vision of  great  collections  of  source  material 
which  would  otherwise  never  have  been  made 
available  and  the  training  of  many  excellent  * 
historians  in  the  process  of  the  compilation  and 
editing  of  the  sources.  The  deplorable  effects 
have  centered  about  the  creation  of  a  danger- 
ous bias  of  patriotism,  which  not  only  prevented* 
a  calm,  objective  and  accurate  handling  of  his- 
torical facts,  even  by  highly  trained  historians, 
but  also  contributed  in  no  small  degree  to  the 
great  increase  in  chauvinism  which  led  to  the 
calamity  of  1914.  The  responsibility  of  the 
nationalistic  historians  in  this  regard  has  been 
well  stated  by  Prof.  H.  Morse  Stephens,  prob-  * 
ably  the  most  thorough  student  of  this  particu- 
lar subject:  "Woe  unto  us!  professional  his- 
torians, professional  historical  students,  pro- 
fessional teachers  of  history,  if  we  cannot  see 
written  in  blood,  in  the  dying  civilization  of 
Europe,  the  dreadful  result  of  exaggerated 
nationalism  as  set  forth  in  the  patriotic  his- 
tories of  some-  of  the  most  eloquent  historians 
of  the  19th  century."  It  would  be  fortunate, 
indeed,  if  this  were  all,  but  for  every  patriot 
made  by  a  Treitschke,  a  Michelct.  a  Fronde  or 
a  Bancroft,  hundreds  have  been  enthused  by 
the  petty  chauvinism  of  the  third-rate  text- 
book compilers  who  have  imitated  their  bias 
without  their  literary  virtues.  The  nature  and 
effect  of  these  textbooks  upon  the  past  genera- 
tion has  been  indicated  for  this  country  by 
Mr.  Charles  Altschul  and  for  France  and  Ger- 
many by  Dr.  J.  F.  Scott.  England  has  not 
fallen  behind  any  of  these  nations  in  this  re- 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


243 


spect.  Some  optimism  for  the  future  may,  how- 
ever, be  discovered  in  the  fact  that  there  is  an 
ever  greater  tendency  for  the  textbook  writing 
to  be  handed  over  to  reliable  and  relatively 
unbiased  professional  historians. 

It  should  be  pointed  out  in  passing  that  the 
zeal  for  collecting  historial  source  material  was 
not  limited  to  the  sources  of  secular  history.  In 
the  same  way  that  the  gathering  of  the  sources 
of  national  history  was  begun  by  Duchesne  in 
the  17th  century,  so  activity  in  collecting  the 
sources  of  ecclesiastical  history  was  initiated 
at  this  same  period  and  has  been  continued  to 
the  present  time.  The  first  complete  collection 
of  the  writings  of  the  Church  Fathers  was 
gathered  and  published  by  Migne  in  382 
volumes  between  1844  and  1864.  While, 
'like  Bancroft's  ^History  of  the  Pacific 
States,'  it  was  a  publisher's  rather  than  a 
scholar's  enterprise,  it  has  been  of  immense 
value  to  students.  The  failure  of  Migne 
to  use  the  best  texts  in  all  cases  has  led  to  the 
attempt  to  produce  better  collections  of  Patristic 
literature.  Since  1866  the  Vienna  Academy  has 
been  publishing  a  carefully  edited  collection  of 
the  writings  of  the  Latin  Fathers,  and  in  1897 
the  Berlin  Academy  began  to  issue  an  edition 
of  the  Greek  Fathers.  The  collection  of  ma- 
terial dealing  with  the  lives  and  deeds  of  the 
saints,  which  was  begun  by  Bolland  in  the 
middle  of  the  I7th  century,  is  still  in  progress. 
A  collection  of  the  acts  of  the  Church  councils 
by  Labbe  and  Cossart  appeared  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  17th  century  and  was  continued  by 
Etienne  Baluze  in  1683.  In  1685  Jean  Har- 
douin  started  a  new  collection,  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  18th  century  Mansi  compiled  the 
largest  of  all  collections  of  the  councils,  a 
new  edition  of  which  is  now  appearing  in  Paris. 
At  the  same  time  that  Mansi  was  preparing 
his  collection  of  conciliar  material  Mainardi 
published  the  collection  of  papal  bulls.  In  the 
latter  half  of  the  19th  century  Jaffe  and 
Potthast  produced  scholarly  collections  of  papal 
"Regesta'^  to  the  year  1304,  and  Kehr  is  now 
engaged  in  the  publication  of  the  latest  and 
most  complete  compilation  of  this  type  of  ma- 
terial. On  the  whole,  the  collections  of  source 
material  for  the  history  of  the  Church  are 
fully  equal  if  not  superior  to  those  for  the 
secular  history  of   Europe. 

5.  The  Rise  of  Modem  Critical  Historical 
Scholarship,— Professor  Gooch,  in  his  scholarly 
and  informing  account  of  the  development  of 
historiography  in  the  19th  century,  points  out 
that  prior  to  the  beginning  of  the  last  century 
historical  science  labored  under  four  serious 
handicaps  —  the  catastrophic  theory  of  historical 
causation  and  the  contempt  for  the  mediaeval 
period,  which  had  characterized  the  rationalist 
school ;  the  absence  of  any  extensive  collection 
of  original  sources;  the  lack  of  critical  methods 
in  handling  historical  materials;  and  the  failure 
to  provide  for  any  systematic  and  competent 
teaching  of  the  subject-matter  or  methods  of 
history.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  how 
the  tRomanticists"  had  corrected  the  faults  of 
the  rationalists  by  insisting  upon  the  law  of 
continuity  in  historical  development  and  by 
looking  upon  the  mediaeval  period  as  the  most 
'fruitful  age  for  historical  researchi  and  it  has 
also  been  briefly  shown  how  the  ^ride  of  ex- 
uberant nationalism  had  led  to  the  provision  of 
magnificent  collections  of   source  material   for 


the  history  of  every  leading  modern  nation.  It 
now  remains  to  trace  the  rise  of  critical  scholar- 
ship in  the  field  of  history  and  to  show  how 
critical  methods  were  widely  disseminated 
through  the  development  of  the  professional 
teacher  of  history. 

It  was  shown  above  that  the  promising  rise 
of  critical  methods  in  the  use  of  historical  ma- 
terials as  an  incident  of  humanism  and  ex- 
emplified in  the  work  of  Blondus,  Beatus 
Rhenanus,  Vadianus  and  Zurita  had  been 
checked  and  smothered  in  the  fierce  religious 
controversies  of  the  period  of  the  Reformation. 
By  the  latter  part  of  the  17th  century,  however, 
the  volume  of  polemic  had  tended  to  decline  and 
it  was  again  possible  to  assume  to  some  extent 
an  objective  attitude  and  to  begin  a  dispassion- 
ate search  for  truth.  This  development  of  sci- 
entific historical  method  passed  through  two 
natural  and  normal  stages :  first,  the  develop- 
ment of  those  auxiliary  sciences,  such  as  diplo- 
matic, chronology,  palaeography,  epigraphy  and 
lexicography,  which  would  enable  the  historian 
to  ascertain  the  genuineness  of  a  document; 
and,  second,  the  growth  of  internal  or  interpre- 
tative criticism,  which  passes  beyond  the  mere 
establishment  of  the  authenticity  of  the  docu- 
ment and  examines  into  the  degree  of  the  credi- 
bility of  its  author. 

The  first  of  the  above  steps  in  the  growth  of 
modern  historical  science  was  primarily  the 
work  of  those  same  Benedictine  monks  of  the 
Congregation  of  Saint  Maur  who  had  been  so 
active  in  the  preliminary  period  of  the  collec- 
tion of  the  sources  of  French  history.  Their 
priority  in  this  movement  seems  to  have  been 
due  to  the  fact  that  not  being  a  militant  order 
they  did  not  have  to  appear  as  vigorous  apolo- 
gists for  Catholicism  and  that  they  also  had  the 
advantage  over  lay  writers  in  not  being  com- 
pelled to  glorify  a  particular  city,  province, 
family  or  dynasty.  In  the  quiet  libraries  of 
their  monastery  they  brought  into  existence  an 
indispensable  portion  of  the  mechanism  of  the 
modern  historian.  TiieJe.adcr  of  the  historical 
scholars  of  the  Order  was  Jean  Mabillon  (1632- 
1707),  who  created  the  science  of  diplomatic  — 
or  the  critical  method  of  determining  the  au- 
theniicity.  of-  documents.  In  1675  a  Jesuit  his- 
torian, Papefefoch,  made  a  sweeping  claim  that 
many  of  the  documents  upon  which  the  Maur- 
ists  had  relied  were  worthless.  Mabillon  de- 
voted the  next  six  years  to  the  preparation  of 
his  reply,  and  in  1681  his  opponent  was  crushed 
under  the  erudition  of  the  *De  re  diplomatica,' 
which  remained  the  standard  treatise  on  the 
subject  until  it  was  displaced  in  the  present 
generation  by  the  volumes  of  Sickel,  Ficher 
and  Giry.  The  basis  of  modern  paleography 
and  archaeology  was  laid  by  Dom  Bernard 
Montfaucon  (1655-1741)  in  his  ^Palaeographia 
graeca>  and  his  ^L'Antiquite  expliquee  et  rep- 
resentee en  figures.'  While  a  layman,  Charles 
du  Fresnc  Du  Cange  had  founded  historical 
lexicQgraphv  in  his  ^Glossarium  mediae  et  in- 
fimae  latinitatis'  (1678),  the  Benedictines  left 
their  impress  upon  this  field  in  the  famous  re- 
vision of  Du  Cange's  work  by  Dom  Carpentier 
(1768).  Finally,  in  a  great  co-operative  work, 
begun  by  Dantine  and  Durand,  and  finished  in 
1790  by  Dom  Clement,  *L'Art  de  verifier  les 
dates,'  chronology  was  at  last  taken  from  the 
hands  of  Eusebius  and  Jerome  and  put  on  a 
scientific  foundation.     Of  course,  the  Benedic- 


244 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


tines  did  not  limit  their  cfTorts  wholly  to  the 
perfecting:  of  methods  of  research,  but  applied 
these  methods  in  the  production  of  volnminous 
works  and  sonrce  collections  on  Chnrch  and 
national  history.  The  advance  in  scientific 
method  which  they  hronght  into  existence  can 
scarcely  he  overestimated.  Before  this  time 
there  had  either  been  no  attempt  to  cite  sources 
or  the  citations  had  been  hopelessly  confused; 
there  had  been  no  general  practice  of  estab- 
lishing the  genuineness  of  a  text;  and  there 
had  been  no  hesitancy  in  altering  the  text 
of  a  document  to  improve  the  stvle.  Now  docu- 
ments were  searchinglv  examined  as  to  their 
authenticity,  the  text  was  quoted  with  exactness, 
and  the  citations  were  invariably  included  and 
given  with  scrupulous  accuracy.  It  is,  however, 
easily  possible  to  overestimate  the  modernity  of 
the  Maurists ;  they  were  as  near  to  Timseus  as 
to  Ranke  or  Gardiner.  Their  critical  methods 
were  almost  entirely  limited  to  external  or 
textual  criticism  —  to  an  examination  of  the 
genuineness  of  the  document.  They  were 
greatly  inferior  to  the  school  of  Voltaire  in 
examining  the  crediliility  of  contemporary  au- 
thorities and  generally  regarded  the  contents 
of  an  authentic  primary  source  as  entirely  iden- 
tical with  absolute  truth.  Neither  did  they  pos- 
sess anything  of  the  romanticist  conception  of 
historical  development  and  the  continutiy  and 
organic  nature  of  cultural  evolution.  They 
were  nearer  to  scientific  antiquarians  than  to 
modern  historians.  Nor  were  they  sceptical  of 
ecclesiastical  tradition.  They  labored  under 
the  pious  opinion  that  the  truth  would  sub- 
stantiate the  contentions  of  the  Church,  but 
in  reality  provided  their  rationalist  contem- 
poraries and  successors  with  a  supply  of 
scholarly  information  with  which  to  rout  the 
ecclesiastics. 

Almost  identical  in  method  with  the  Bene- 
dictines was  the  work  of  the  Jansenist,  Louis 
,  Sebastian  de  Tillemont  (1637-1698),  on  the  his- 
tory of  the  Church  and  the  Roman  Empire  to 
600  A.D.  His  product  was  highly  objective, 
being  primarily  a  mosaic  pieced  together  from 
sources  which  were  selected  to  harmonize  but 
were  not  altered.  It  was  one  of  the  earliest  of 
modern  historical  \yorks  to  include  a  critical 
discussion  of  the  principal  sources  for  each 
period.  His  solid  work,  designed  as  a  pillar 
of  Christian  doctrine,  was  one  of  the  chief 
sources  used  by  the  sceptical  Gibbon.  A  similar 
example  of  the  new  erudite  methods  was  the 
researches  into  the  history  of  the  Guelfs  car- 
ried on  by  the  German  philosopher,  Gottfried 
Wilhelm  Leibnitz  (1646-1716)  in  his  <  Annals 
of  the  House  of  Brunswick.*  A  step  was  taken 
towards  the  development  of  internal  criticism 
by  the  great  Italian,  Muratori  (1672-1750), 
who  made  a  number  of  advances  over  his  mas- 
ter, Mabillon.  He  was  as  critical  of  miracles 
as  Blondus  and  departed  widely  from  the  Bene- 
dictine practice  of  regarding  contemporary 
sources  as  infallible.  The  methods  of  Mabillon 
and  Muratori  were  combined  with  some  faint 
anticipation  of  the  romanticist  conception  of 
historical  development  in  Rapin  Thoyras'  (1661- 
1735)  'History  of  England,*  which  long  re- 
mained the  chief  source  on  the  Continent  for 
the  history  of  17th  century  England.  Finally, 
in  the  co-operative  'Universal  History*  pro- 
duced by  the  English  scholars,  Campbell,  Sale, 
Swinton,  Bower  and  Psalmanazar,  the  erudite 


school  pulilished  the  most  scholarly  universal 
history  since  the  humanist  attempt  in  the  'En- 
neadcs^  of  Sa!)ellicus.  While  thoroughly  pious 
in  its  approach,  it  has  been  called  by  no  less 
authoritative  a  critic  than  Fueter  "the  first 
universal  history  worthy  of  the  name.** 

]3^  hile  Vadianus,  Muratori  and  Thoyras  had 
shown  at  least  an  embryonic  power  of  criti- 
cizing the  credibility  of  contemporary  or  "pri- 
mary,** sources  and  documents,  the  real  begin- 
ning of  the  searching  internal  criticism  of  his- 
torical docurnents  must  be  assigned  to  the  work' 
of  the  Jesuitsa  Having  been  put  upon  the  de- 
fensive l)y  thel'rotestant  onslaughts,  they  were 
compelled  to  examine  the  sources  of  ecclesias- 
tical history  to  discover  what  portion  of  the  old 
traditions  and  legends  would  bear  the  test  of 
scientific  scrutiny.  By  this  means  they  hoped 
to  eliminate  the  damaging  criticism  of  the 
Church  by  Protestant  historians  who  ridiculed 
the  many  crude  and  obviously  false  legends 
connected  with  the  Catholic  past.  The  chief 
example  of  this  Jesuit  criticism  was  the  monu- 
mental 'Acta  Sanctorum,'  begun  by  the  Belgian  * 
Jesuits  under  Bolland's  direction  in  1643.  Here 
the  sources  bearing  on  the  lives  of  the  various 
saints  were  arranged  according  to  their  age 
and  authenticity.  A  much  more  healthy  spirit 
of  criticism  was  exhibited  by  -i^ierre  Bayle 
(1647-1706)  in  his  'Historical  and  Critical  Dic- 
tionary^ and  in  his  criticism  of  the  history  of 
Calvinism  by  Maimbourg.  Bayle  took  especial 
delight  in  pointing  out  the  grave  discrepancies 
between  the  views  and  opinions  of  contem- 
porary authorities  and  did  not  hesitate  to  ex- 
tend his  methods  to  the  examination  of  "sacred*^ 
history.  Since  the  period  of  humanism  the  his- 
torians of  classical  antiquity  had  been  regarded 
with  a  reverent  confidence  second  only  to  the 
"Fathers.**  Valla  had  questioned  some  asser- 
tions of  Livy,  but  it  was  left  for  Louis  de 
Beaufort  (d.  1795)  in  his  'Dissertation  sur 
I'incertitude  des  cinq  premiers  siecles  de  I'his- 
toire  romaine,*  to  prove  that  the  divergence  in 
the  accounts  of  the  period  by  the  great  classical 
authorities  indicated  that  the  history  of  Rome 
before  the  third  century  B.C.  rested  almost 
wholly  on  legendary  material.  The  work  of 
Beaufort  marked  a  break  with  humanism  in 
attitude  and  method  as  well  as  in  style.  The 
most  obscure  member  of  this  critical  school, 
but  perhaps  the  ablest  historian  before  Niebuhr 
was  Jean  Baptiste  Dubos  (1672-1740).  His 
'Histoire  critique  de  I'establissement  de  la 
monarchic  francaise  dans  Ics  Gaules*  was  the 
first  attempt  to  turn  the  new  critical  methods 
upon  the  study  of  institutions.  In  as  objective 
a  spirit  as  that  exhibited  by  Ranke  he  examined 
the  documentary  sources  for  the  early  history 
of  France  and  anticipated  Fauriel  and  Cou- 
langes  in  proving  that  the  Merovingians  had 
merely  adapted  and  not  displaced  Roman  cul- 
ture in  Gaul.  He  also  anticipated  the  roman- 
ticists in  possessing  a  grasp  upon  the  concep- 
tion of  the  gradual  and  organic  development 
of  civilization  which  was  vastly  superior  to  the 
catastrophic  theory  of  the  contemporary  ration- 
alists. In  this  respect  he  marked  an  advance  in 
the  direction  of  Moser.  Less  critical,  but  more 
truly  historical  was  the  'History  of  Osnabriick> 
by  Justus  Moser  (1720-94),  regarded  by  many 
as  the  first  real  constitutional  history,  in 
that  it  showed  the  manner  in  which  political 
institutions    develop   out    of    the    deeper    social 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISK   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


346 


and  economic  forces  in  the  life  of  a  state. 
It  was  a  disciple  of  Moser,  Barthold  Georges 
Niebuhr  (1776-1831),  who  is  conventionally  re- 
garded as  the  creator  of  modern  historiography, 
but  if  the  foregoing  discussions  have  shown 
anything  they  have  proved  that  no  single  per- 
sonality or  school  can  be  regarded  as  having 
brought  into  existence  the  totality  of  modern 
historical  science.  Niebuhr,  a  Dane  called  to 
the  new  University  of  Berlin  bv  Humboldt  in 
1810,  is  one  of  the  best  examples  of  this  tend- 
ency to  synthesize  the  progressive  methods 
of  his  predecessors.  He  was  influenced  by 
Savigny's  romanticism  in  the  study  of  the 
evolution  of  legal  and  political  institutions. 
He  followed  Moser  in  his  profound  conception 
•  of  the  development  of  political  institution's. 
Finally,  he  applied  to  the  sources  of  early  Ro- 
man history  the  critical  methods  which  had 
been  adopted  bj^  Wolf  in  his  epoch-making 
studies  of  the  authorship  of  the  Homeric  poems. 
His  'Roman  History*  was  the  first  book  to 
combine  the  best  of  the  newer  critical  methods 
with  the  constructive  principles  of  synthetic  in- 
stitutional history,  and  it  was  the  chief  source 
of  inspiration  for  the  historical  work  of  his 
greater  successors,  Leopold  von  Ranke  and 
Theodor  Mommsen. 

Von  Baalia  (1795-1886)  first  became  inter- 
ested in  history  through  his  studies  in  classical 
literature,  the  influence  of  romanticism  and  the 
reading  of  Niebuhr.  His  immediate  activity  as 
a  historian  was  initiated  by  his  discovery  of 
the  wide  divergence  between  the  accounts  of 
the  events  of  the  15th  century  in  Italian  his- 
tory as  presented  by  the  leading  contemporary 
authorities.  This  led  to  the  publication  in  1824 
of  his  'History  of  the  Romance  and  Germanic 
Peoples,  1494-1535.'  Its  most  significant  por- 
tion was  the  appendix,  entitled  *'Zur  Kritik 
neuerer  Geschichtschreiber,^  and  devoted  to  an 
analysis  of  the  sources  of  information  for  the 
period  that  he  had  covered.  This  did  for  in- 
ternal and  interpretative  criticism  what  Mabil- 
lon's  treatise  on  diplomatic  had  done  for  ex- 
ternal criticism,  or  the  critical  study  of  texts, 
It  was  Ranke's  great  contribution  to  historical 
method  to  have  insisted  that  the  historian  must 
not  only  use  ^rictlv  c.Qnipm[>nra.vy  snnyr.Qs  pf 
>  information,  But  must  also  make  a  thorough 
^"sTiidy  of  the  personality,  "tendencies''  and  ac- 
,  tivities  of  the  author  to  determine  as  far  as 
/  possible  the  personal  equation  in  his  record  of 
|,  events.  There  were  two  more  fundamental 
characteristics  in  the  historical  mechanism  of 
Ranke,  namely,  the  conception  derived  from  the 
romanticists  that  every  nation  and  a.^e  is  domi- 
nated by  a  pre^lent  set  of  ideas,  designated  by 
Ranke,  the  *xeitgeist,"  and  the  doctrine  that  the 
historian  must  view  the  past  wholly  freed  from 
the  prejudices  of  the  present  and  must  narrate 
the  events  of  the  past-'^wic  es  eig^ntlich  ge- 
weseiT;^/Tfis"'derects  have  been  pointed  out  by 
later  writers  as  the  failure  to  exhaust  the 
sources  available  for  any  subject  upon  which  he 
wrote  and  a  primary  concern  with  political 
events  and  dominating  personalities  to  the 
neglect  of  the  more  fundamental  facts  of 
economic  and  social,  and  even  of  political,  life. 
While  he  ranged  over  the  entire  history  of 
Europe  and  the  world  and  left  an  enduring 
mark  upon  every  field,  it  was  his  contributions 
to  historical  methods  and  teaching  which  were 
mainly  significant  for  the  growth  of  historiog- 


raphy. To  historical  method  he  contributed 
primarily  through  his  formulation  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  internal  criticism  and  his  insistence 
upon  entire  objectivity  in  the  treatment  of  the 
past.  His  influence  upon  historical  scholarship 
through  his  teaching  was  probably  greater  than 
through  the  exemplification  of  his  methods  in 
his  written  works.  That  fundamental  instru- 
ment for  the  advancement  of  historical  scholar- 
ship in  the  academic  world — the  Historical 
Seminar  —  was  founded  by  Ranke  in  1833  and 
if  served  to  train  not  only  the  leading  German 
historians,  but  historical  students  from  all  over 
the  world  who  came  to  serve  in  the  historical 
laboratory  which  he  maintained  during  the 
period  of  half  a  century.  When  Ranke  became 
too  aged  to  conduct  his  seminar  with  effective- 
ness, his  greatest  pupil,  George  Waitz,  adopted 
the  methods  of  his  master  at  the  University  of 
Gottingen,  where  nearly  every  leading  mediaeval- 
ist  of  the  last  generation  received  at  least  a 
part  of  his  training. 

With  the  work.oi.-JS^uike  thcfauiwiations  of 
modern  historical  scholarship  wcrgj^nally  laid. 
The  progress  since  his  time  has  consisted  pri- 
marily in  a  further  refinement  of  critical  meth- 
ods and  their  general  dissemination  among  a 
continually  growing  body  of  historical  scholars. 
This  progressive  expansion  of  scientific  his- 
torical scholarship  has  been  in  part  the  result 
of  the  direct  imitation  of  Ranke's  methods  by 
his  students  and  in  part  the  outgrowth  in  every 
country  of  those  same  preliminary  conditions 
and  developments  which  made  the  work  of 
Ranke  possible. 

In  Germany  the  growth  of  the  critical  school 
of  historiography  was  primarily  the  result  of 
the  work  of  Ranke.  Among  his  pupils  were 
Kopke,  Jaffe,  Waitz,  Giesebrecht  and  Von  Sybel 
who  perpetuated  the  methods  of  their  master  in 
their  own  writings  and  teaching.  Waitz  prob- 
ably surpassed  Ranke  in  the  thoroughness  and 
exactness  of  his  scholarship.  The  existence  of 
independent  sources  of  the  new  scholarship  is 
best  seen  in  the  case  of  Mommsen,  who  was 
a  product  of  the  same  general  circumstances 
that  made  the  work  of  Ranke  possible,  and 
who  fully  equalled  Ranke  in  the  field  of  schol- 
arship. In  the  generation  since  Droysen, 
Treitschke  and  Svbel,  the  works  of  the  younger 
contributors  to  German  hislorj-  have  shown 
more  perfectly  the  objectivity  of  Ranke  and 
have  eliminated  the  errors  due  to  the  rabid 
patriotism  of  their  predecessors.  Moriz  Ritter 
has  produced  the  most  detailed  and  scholarly 
treatment  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  and  the 
events  of  the  Counter-Reformation.  Bernhard 
Erdmannsdorffer  has  dealt  with  great  scholar- 
ship and  candor  with  the  period  from  the 
Thirtv  Years'  War  to  the  accession  of  Fred- 
crick  the  Great  and  has  rejected  Droysen's 
laudatory  picture  of  the  early  Hohenzollerns 
and  their  "mission."  R.  Koser,  in  what  is 
probably  the  most  scholarly  biographical  pro- 
duct of  modern  critical  historiography,  has  re- 
moved from  Frederick  the  Great  the  halo  with 
which  he  was  adorned  by  Droysen  and  Carlyle. 
The  period  from  Jena  to  the  Revolution  of  1848 
has  been  studied  by  Hans  Delbriick,  Alax  Leh- 
mann  and  F.  Meinecke  with  much  greater  fair- 
ness, poise  and  scholarship  than  was  exhibited 
Iiy  Treitschke.  Erich  Marcks  and  Max  Lenz 
have  removed  from  Bismarck  the  "Sunday 
clothes®  with  which  he  was  dressed  by  Sybel 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


and  have  laid  bare  his  policies  and  intrigues. 
Alfred  Stern  is  engaged  upon   what  is  by   far 

'the  most  exhaustive  and  scholarly  history  of 
Europe  in  the  19th  century.  Further,  the  influ- 
ence of  the  ficole  des  Chartes  in  improving  the 
exact  methods  of  handling  documents  has  been 
evident  in  the  Germanies  in  the  work  of  such 
men  as  Sickel  and  the  foundation  of  the  Vienna 
Historical  Institute  in  1854.  The  general  nature 
of  German  historical  scholarship  as  exemplified 
in  the  adoption  of  critical  methods  is  best  ob- 
servable   in    the    co-operative    work    edited    by 

f  W.  Oncken,  *Allgemeine  Geschichte  in  Einzel- 
darstellungen' ;  and  in  the  <Jahrbucher  der 
deutschen  Geschichte,  >  which  has  been  in  pro- 
cess of  publication  by  the  Historical  Commis- 
sion of  the  Munich  Academy  since  1862.  The 
most  erudite  and  complete  synthesis  of  scien- 
tific historical  methodolog>'  ever  prepared  has 
been  produced  by  E.  Bernheim,  though  G.  Wolf 

'  has  more  recently  made  a  creditable  contribu- 
tion to  this  field.  The  discussion  of  the  ap- 
plication of  this  new  critical  scholarship  to  the 
field  of  German  political  history  should  not 
cause  one  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  equal 
progress  has  been  made  in  the  field  of  Church 
history  since  the  days  of  the  Centurians.  In- 
terest in  this  subject  was  revived  by  Neander 
in  the  first  half  of  the  19th  century.  In  the 
work  of  Hinschius,  Richter  and  Sohm  on  the 
canon  law;  Hauck's  history  of  the  German 
Church;  the  labors  of  Hefele  and  Hergen- 
rother  on  the  councils;  Pastor's  history  of  the 
Popes  of  the  "Renaissance^^;  Harnack's  monu- 
mental history  of  Christian  dogma,  and  Kraus' 
history  of  Christian  art,  are  to  be  seen  v^^orks 
which  rank  with  the  best  products  of  critical 
political  historiography. 

The  growth  of  critical  historical  scholarship 
in  France  owed  something  to  German  influences 
and  some  of  the  leading  French  historians,  such 
as  Monod,  w-ere  trained  by  the  German  masters, 
but  on  the  whole  the  progress  of  historical 
scholarship  in  France  has  been  primarily  an  in- 
digenous development.  To  TSflAl^^ihr  might  be 
compared  Fauriel,  who  was  the  inspiration  of 
Guizot  and  his  associates.     While  Guizot  never 

, equalled  Ranke  with  respect  to  exact  scholar- 
ship or  productivity  he  was  far  superior  to 
Ranke  in  analysis  and  more  capable  and  active 
as  an  editor,  and  his  influence  in  stimulating 
historical  scholarship  in  France  was  fully  com- 
parable to  that  exerted  by  Ranke  in  Germany. 
The  precise  scholarship  of  Waitz  found  its 
first     French     counterpart     in     the     works     of 

.  FranQois  Mignet,  which  foreshadowed  modern 
French  historiography,  not  only  by  their  high 
critical  standards,  but  also  by  their  almost  un- 
canny powers  of  causal  analysis  and  their  re- 
markable lucidity  in  exposition.  The  perfec- 
tion of  exact  historical  rnethods  in  France 
was  not  due  to  an  individual,  as  in  Ger- 
many, but  to  the  labors  of  many  scholars 
and  teachers  in  the  greatest  of  the  world's 
schools  for  the  training  of  historians  in  the  re- 
fined methods  of  criticism,  L'ficole  des  Chartes, 
which  began  its  work  in  1829.  The  names  of 
Delisle,  Guerard,  Monod,  Luchaire,  Molinier, 

*  Giry  and  Viollet  are   indicative   of   the  quality 

of     work     produced     by     the     institution.       In 

Aulard,  France  possesses  a  scholar  whose  de- 

'    tailed  and  masterly  knowledge  of  a  brief  period 

of  national  history  can  be  equalled  among  the 


world's  historians  only  by  Gardiner,  and  the 
myths  surrounding  the  French  Revolution  have 
at  last  been  put  to  rest.  The  finest  representa- 
tive collection  of  French  historical  scholarship 
is  to  be  found  in  the  co-operative  *Histoire 
generale'  edited  by  Lavisse  and  Rambaud  and 
in  the  *Histoire  de  France^  edited  by  Lavisse.' 
Space  forbids  more  than  a  brief  enumeration 
of  some  of  the  leading  members  of  this  recent 
generation  of  French  scholars  who  have  made 
the  most  notable  contributions  to  historical 
knowledge.  C.  Jullian  has  carried  the  methods  of 
his  master,  Coulanges,  into  a  thorough  survey 
of  ancient  Gaul  under  the  Roman  Empire.  A. 
Berthelot  has  distinguished  himself  by  studies  in 
the  later  Roman  Empire  and  the  beginnings  of 
mediaeval  Europe.  G.  Bloch  has  contributed  some 
striking  monographs  on  the  transition  from  Ro- 
man to  mediaeval  civilization.  C.  Diehl  has  de- 
voted himself  to  the  period  of  the  revival  of  the 
Eastern  Empire  under  Justinian.  Feudalism 
has  been  analyzed  by  C.  Seignobos  and  A. 
Luchaire.  Seigii,gbos  has  also  rendered  valu-  • 
able  service  to  modern  history  and  to  the  gen- 
eral history  of  civilization,  while  Luchaire  is 
the  peerless  authority  on  France  of  the  11th, 
12th  and  early  13th  centuries.  C.  Lapglois  ha^ 
traced  the  decline  of  the  Capetians.  Town 
life  in  the  Middle  Ages  has  received  the  atten- 
tion of  A.  Giry,  who  has  also  contributed  the  , 
standard  treatise  on  diplomatic.  C.  Bemont  is 
easily  the  leading  French  student  of  mediaeval 
England,  though  Ferdinand  Lot  has  done 
notable  work  in  early  French  and  English 
mediaeval  history.  C-  Bayet  holds  the  same 
place  with  respect  to  the  investigation  of  the 
Mediaeval  Empire  and  has  also  done  signal  work 
on  the  Byzantine  Empire.  A.  Coville  is  the  mas- 
ter of  the  period  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War. 
C.  Pfister  has  contributed  important  mono- 
graphs to  mediaeval  history,  the  history  of 
Nancy  and  the  administrative  policy  of  Henry 
IV.  The  15th  century  has  received  the  attention 
of  C.  Petit-Dutaillis.  H.  Lemonnier  is  the  un- 
disputed authority  on  the  history  of  France  in' 
the  16th  century.  Hanotaux  has  analyzed  the 
France  of  the  opening  of  the  17th  century.  E. 
Lavisse  has  also  claimed  the  17th  and  holds  the 
first  place  among  French  editors  of  co-operative 
historical  works.  H.  Vast  has  surveyed  in 
a  brilliant  fashion  the  political  history  of 
France  in  the  later  I7th  and  18th  centuries 
and  the  era  of  Napoleon.  The  18th  cen- 
tury has  also  profited  by  the  labors  of.  H. 
Carre  and  P.  Sagnac  in  th^  political  his- 
tory of  France  and  Europe,  while  A.  Sorel  has 
mastered  the  international  relations  of  this  cen- 
tury to  an  unparalleled  degree.  Aulard's  unique 
work  on  the  French  Revolution  has  been  men- 
tioned above.  A.  Debidour  and  A.  Malet  have 
synthesized  the  recent  scholarship  dealing  with 
France  in  the  last  century  and  have  done  notable 
work  on  the  history  of  modern  European  diplo- 
macy, while  H.  Marieiol  has  covered  the  history 
of  modern  France  and  Spain,  being  especially  an 
authority  on  the  early  Bourbons.  The  leading 
French  authoritv  on  modern  Germany  and 
Austria  is  G.  Blondel,  while  the  similar  posi-i 
tion  with  respect  to  Hungary,  Bohemia  and 
Poland  must  be  assigned  to  E.  Denis  and  L. 
Leger.  A.  Rambaud.  perhaps  the  most  erudite 
and  versatile  figure  in  French  historiography,  ^ 
has  earned  for  himself  an  enviable  position  in 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT 


247 


many  fields.  Winning  his  reputation  by  a 
monograph  on  the  Byzantine  Empire,  he  has 
since  become  the  leading  French  authority  on 
Slavonic  Europe  and  has  contributed  brilliant 
surveys  of  French  civilization  and  the  growth 
of  the  French  colonial  empire.  All  students 
of  the  ecclesiastical  and  political  history  of 
Europe  are  immensely  indebted  to  the  masterly 
reviews  of  the  relation  between  the  Church 
and  the  State  throughout  the  history  of  France 
by  E.  Chenon  and  Debidour.  Rcnan  has  found 
his  ablest  successor  in  fimile  Faguet  whose 
survey  of  French  thought  cannot  be  matched 
in  any  other  country.  Nor  should  one  forget 
the  contributions  of  E.  Levasseur  to  economic 
history;  of  P.  Tannery  to  the  history  of 
science;  and  of  C.  Langlois  to  the  subject  of 
historical  l)ibliography  and  methodology.  The 
contributions  of  other  recent  French  historians 
will  be  mentioned  in  the  treatment  of  special 
phases  of  modern  historiography.  What  Ranke 
achieved  for  the  improvement  of  the  teaching 
of  history  in  Germany  was  accomplished  in 
France  by  Jean  Victor  Duruy,  Ernest  Lavisse, 

•Charles  Bemont  and  Gabriel  Monod.  Monod, 
probably  the  most  scholarly  and  stimulating 
teacher  of  history  who  has  yet  lived,  brought 
to  perfection  the  seminar  method  which  had 
been  introduced  by  Duruy.  In  conclusion,  no 
sketch  of  French  historical  scholarship  would 
be  complete  without  proper  recognition  of  the 
unparalleled  ability  of  French  historians  to 
unite  careful  scholarship  with  a  broad  inter- 
pretation of  historical  material,  an  admirable 
lucidity  of  expression  and  rare  powers  of  syn- 
thetic organization. 

Even  more  than  was  the  case  with  France, 
critical  historical  scholarship  in  England  was  a 
native    product.     Beginning    in    the    work    of 

.  such  men  as  Freeman,  Stubbs,  Green,  Lecky, 
Creighton  and  Seeley,  it  has  reached  its  highest 
point  in  the  work  of  Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner 
on  the  stirring  events  of  the  first  half  of  the 
17th  century.  For  a  thorough  mastery  of  all 
the  available  sources  for  a  limited  period  and 
the  ability  to  organize  these  in  an  inteJligible 
narrative  he  has  but  one  rival,  Aulard,  and  the 
objectivity  of  his  wcrk  surpasses  that  of  the 
Frenchman.  The  English  have  never,  however, 
provided  anything  comparable  to  the  ficole  des 
Chartes  or  the  Historical  Institute  at  Vienna 
for  the  training  of  young  historians  in  the  most 
recent  methods  of  exact  critical  scholarship. 
The  great  repertory  of  the  best  products  of 
recent  English  historical  scholarship  is  the 
co-operative  works  —  the  incomplete  'Cam- 
bridge Mediaeval  History,  >  the  'Cambridge 
Modern  History,  >  and  the  less  pretentious 
series  edited  by  Hunt  and  Oman.  Any  cata- 
logue of  the  modern  leaders  of  English  critical 
historical  scholarship  would  certainly  include 
the  following  names.  N.  H.  Baynes  has  dealt 
with  the  Eastern  Roman  Empire,  a  field  which 
has  been  more  extensively  cultivated  by  J.  B. 
Bury,  whose  thorough  and  versatile  scholarship 

•has  also  been  demonstrated  by  work  on  the 
later  Roman  Empire,  by  his  critical  edition  of 
Gibbon  and  by  his  planning  of  the  'Cambridge 
Mediaeval  HistDry.'  .  The  mediaeval  history  of 
both  England-  and  continental  Europe  fias 
profited  by  the  labors  of  C.  W.  Oman,  who  has 
also  distinguished  himself  in  the  field  of 
modern  history  by  a  comprehensive  work  on  the 
Peninsular  War.     H.  C.  W.  Davis,  one  of  the 


most  brilliant  of  the  younger  present-day 
mediaevalists,  has  contributed  notable  work  on 
the  whole  field  of  mediaeval  history,  but  partic- 
ularly upon  the  11th  and  12th  centuries.  T.  F. 
Tout  has  dealt  with  England  in  the  13th  and 
14th  centuries,  as  well  as  with  the  relations  be- 
tween the  Church  and  empire  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  from  a  broad  and  well-balanced  point  of 
view.  J.  H.  Round  has  exhibited  exceptional 
scholarship  by  his  studies  of  English  feudalism 
and  mediaeval  legal  institutions.  The  work  of 
the  late  F.  W,  Maitland  on  the  social  inter- 
pretation of  English  legal  institutions  marked^ 
the  greatest  advance  in  that  field  since  the  time' 
of  Stubbs.  The  work  of  James  Bryce  on  the 
Mediaeval  Empire  has  never  been  superseded,, 
though  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  has  more  recently 
turned  to  that  subject  with  both  insight  and 
scholarship.  Ernest  Barker  has  contributed  a 
number  of  scholarly  monographs  on  diverse 
phases  of  mediaeval  history.  G.  M.  Trevelyan.. 
has  dealt  with  England  in  both  the  14th  and 
the  17th  centuries  in  works  which  not  only  ex- 
hibit original  scholarship,  but  also  the  finest 
mastery  of  English  prose  to  be  found  among 
critical  English  historians  of  the  present  day. 
The  careful  scholarship  of  Richard  Lodge  has 
been  displayed  in  the  treatment  of  the  transi- 
tion from  the  mediaeval  to  the  modern  period 
in  both  England  and  continental  Europe.  J.  A. 
Doyle's  account  of  English  colonization  in  . 
America  is,  perhaps,  surpassed  only  by  the 
American  work  of  Professor  Osgood.  James 
Gairdner's  calm  and  scholarly  work  on  the  15th 
century  and  the  Tudor  period  has  been  carried 
on  by  A.  D.  Innes,  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  and  A.  F. 
Pollard,  the  latter  one  of  the  most  original  and 
promising  writers  now  engaged  in  the  field  of 
English  history.  G.  W.  Prothero  has  sketched 
the  later  16th  century  and  has  secured  for  him- 
self a  position  as  an  historical  editor  com- 
parable to  that  held  in  France  by  Lavisse.  It 
is  a  sufficient  commentary  on  the  work  of  C.  H. 
Firth  on  the  history  of  the  middle  of  the  17th 
century  to  observe  that  the'  scholarship  of 
Gardiner  has  not  suffered  in  the  w'ork  of  his 
continuator.  That  Lecky's  great  work  on  the 
18th  century  did  not  doom  his  successors  to 
barren  eff^orts  is  shown  by  the  w-orks  of  L.  S. 
Leadam  and  W.  Hunt,  C.  G.  Robertson's  narra- 
tive on  the  early  Hanoverians,  G.  O.  Trevelyan's 
survey  of  the  American  Revolution  and  by  the 
biographies  of  the  elder  Pitt  by  Rosebury  and 
Williams,  of  Burke  by  Morley,  of  Fox  by 
Trevelyan  and  of  the  younger  Pitt  by  Rose. 
Stanley  Leathes  has  no  English  competitor  as 
an  authority  on  the  political  history  of  France. 

F.  C.  Montague  and  J.  R.  M.  Macdonald  have 
investigated  the  history  of  18th  century  France, 
and  H.  Morse  Stephens  contributed  the  first, 
scholarly  synthesis  of  the  French  Revolution 
before  he  left  his  native<-land  to  win  academic 
distinction  in  the  United  States.  J.  H.  Rose 
is  the  undisputed  English  authority  on  the ' 
Napoleonic  period,  while  H.  A.  L.  Fisher  has 
been  attracted  by  Napoleon's  administrative  re- 
forms. The  19tl|  century  has  been  covered  by 
the  works  of  Spencer  Walpole,  Herbert  Paul, 

G.  Slater  and  J.  A.  R.  Marriott  and  by  a  num- 
ber of  notable  biographies,  such  as  those  of 
Francis  Place  by  Graham  Wallas,  of  Cobden 
and  Gladstone  by  Morley,  of  Bright  by  G.  M. 
Trevelj'an  and  of  Disraeli  by  Mon\-penny  and 
Buckle.    The  history  of  the  British  Empire  has 


248 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


V 


received  detailed  attention  from  Egerton,  Lucas 
Innes  and  H.  H.  Johnston.  F.uropean  politics 
and  international  relations  in  the  last  century 
have  heen  dealt  with  by  W.  A.  Phillips,  G.  L. 
Dickinson  and  J.  A.  R.  Marriott;  In  addition, 
there  should  he  mentioned  the  exhaustive 
scholarship  of  A.  W.  Ward  with  respect  to  all 
things  connected  with  the  political  history  of 
modern  Germany  and  the  detailed  studies  of 
W.  H.  Dawson  on  the  modern  German  Empire; 
the  scholarly  work  of  R.  N.  Bain,  R.  W.  Scton- 
Watson,  D.  M.  XVallace,  F.  H.  Skrine  and  W. 
Miller  on  Scandinavian,  Slavonic  and  eastern 
Europe;  the  studies  of  Italian  unification  by 
Bolton  King  and  G.  M.  Trevelj^an ;  and  the 
comprehensive  work  of  Martin  Hume  on 
modern  Spain.  Cluirch  history  has  not  been 
neglected  in  England,  the  more  notalile  products 
in  this  field  being  the  works  of  H.  M.  Gwatkin 
and  F.  .1.  Foakes-Jackson  on  the  early  Church; 
of  H.  B.  Workman  on  the  Mediaeval  Church 
and  the  preliminaries  of  the  Reformation;  of 
C.  Beard  and  T.  M.  Lindsay  on  the  Reforma- 
tion in  general,  and  of  James  Gairdner  and  R. 
W.  Dixon  on  the  Reformation  in  England;  of 
R.  W.  Church  and  F.  W.  Cornish  on  the  re- 
ligious movements  of  the  last  century;  of  H. 
W.  Clark  on  the  Non-Conformists;  and  the 
monumental  co-operative  history  of  Stephens 
and  Hunt  on  the  whole  period  of  English 
ecclesiastical  history.  The  contributions  of 
Cunningham  and  Ashley  to  economic  history 
and  of  Morley,  Stephen,  Benn  and  Merz  to 
intellectual  history  will  be  dealt  with  in  another 
place.  Finally,  no  student  of  historiography 
could  fail  to  commend  G.  P.  Gooch  for  his  ex- 
cellent execution  of  Lord  Acton's  long-deferred 
plan  to  sketch  the  development  of  modern  his- 
torical writing.  Of  the  teachers  of  history  in 
England  who  have  done  the  most  to  inspire 
their  pupils  with  the  ideals  of  modern  criticism 
and  with  an  interest  in  historical  investigation 
Freeman,  Seeley,  Actorr  and  Maitland  have  had 
the  widest  and  most  salutary  influence. 

The  beginning  of  modern  critical  scholar- 
ship in  the  field  of  American  historv  dates  back 
only  to  about  the  period  of  the  close  of  the 
American  Civil  _War.  It  owed  its  origin  very 
largely  to  the  influence  of  Germany.  In  the 
first  cjuarter  of  the  19th  century  George  Ban- 
croft liad  attended  the  lectures  of  Heeren  and 
had  later  been  a  friend  of  Ranke.  Not  having 
been  an  academician,  Bancroft  had  little  in- 
fluence on  scientific  historical  methods  in  the 
United  States.  The  real  beginning  of  the  sys- 
tematic introduction  of  the  improved  methods 
of  German  historical  scholarship  into  the 
United  States  began  in  the  vear  1857  when 
Henrj-  Torrey  succeeded  Sparks  at  Harvard, 
Francis  Lieber  assumed  his  professorship  at 
CQlumbia,  and  Andrew  D.  White  accepted  a 
chair  of  history  at  Michigan.  All  of  these 
men  had  been  trained  in  Germany  and  estab- 
lished a  direct  contact  between  German  and 
American  scholarship.  Professor  White  had 
also  been  profoundly  influenced  by  Gui^ot,  and 
his  teaching  was  never  limited  to  tne  narrowly 
episodical  and  political  historv  which  attracted 
fhe  extreme  disciples  of  Ranke  and  the  Prus- 
sian jichool.  A  still  greater  impulse  to  the 
sound  establishment  of  historical  scholarship  in 
^  America  came  when  Herbert  Baxter  Adams 
instituted  the  teaching  of  history  in  Johns 
Hopkins  University  in   1876  immediately  after 


the  conclusion  of  his  studies  in  Gottingen,  Ber- 
lin and  Heidelberg.  To  Prof.  H.  B.  Adams 
was  due  not  only  the  establishment  of  the 
"seminar"  method  of  instruction  in  America, 
but  also  the  organization  and  creation  of  the 
first  great  training  school  for  historians  in 
Arnerica.  There  is  scarcely  a  great  American 
university  at  the  present  day  which  does  not 
have  in  its  department  of  history  one  or  more 
men  trained  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  seminar, 
and  the  literary  products  of  this  seminar  were 
the  first  conspicuous  exemplification  in  America 
of  the  newer  critical  historical  schcjjarship. 
Much  the  greatest  personal  influence  in  the  in- 
troduction of  the  German  methods  and  ideals 
was  that  of  Professor  John  William  Burgess, 
who  began  his  work  at  Amherst  in  1873  after 
having  studied  in  Gottingen,  Leipzig  and  Ber- 
lin and  who  founded  in  1880  the  famous  faculty 
of  political  science  at  Columbia,  w'hich  came  to 
rival  and  later  to  overshadow  Johns  Hopkins. 
Professor  Adams,  while  appreciating  the  value 
of  the  exact  German  methods,  had  a  healthy 
confidence  in  the  ability  of  American  scholars 
to  interpret  and  apply  the  new  methods,  but 
Professor  Burgess  was  convinced  that  at  best 
Americans  could  be  but  lame  and  halting  imi- 
tators of  Germanic  genius  and  induced  most  of 
his  students  to  finish  their  studies  in  Germany. 
As  Prof.  H.  B.  Adams  has  expressed  it.  "The 
students  of  Professor  Burgess  went  to  Berlin 
in  shoals.  They  went  in  such  numbers  that 
they  began  to  be  called  the  ^Burgess  School.* 
They  all  went  to  hear  Droysen  lecture;  and 
came  home  with  trunks  full  of  Droj-sen's 
'Preussische  Politik'  and  of  the  writings  of 
Leopold  von  Ranke.**  In  addition  to  the  work 
of  Johns  Hopkins  and  Columbia,  Michigan  ad- 
vanced the  new  methods  under  Charles  K. 
Adams,  and  Cornell  under  President  White, 
Moses  Coit  Tyler  and  George  Lincoln  Burr. 
About  this  same  time  Edward  Channing, .  at 
Harvard,  carried  to  completion  the  beginnings 
in  the  newer  historical  scholarship  which  had 
been  made  by  Henry  Adams  in  the  "seventies.** 
At  the  present  time  the  new  scholarship  has 
permeated  the  whole  American  university 
world  and  the  American  students  of  history 
need  no  longer,  as  Professor  Gooch  would  seem 
to  indicate,  seek  their  training  abroad.  In  the 
seminars  of  such  scholars  as  Herbert  L.  Osgood, 
William  A.  Dunning,  George  Burton  Adams, 
J.  F.  Jameson,  Frederick  Jackson  Turner, 
George  Lincoln  Burr,  Edward  Channing,  Ed- ' 
ward  G.  Bourne,  Dana  C.  Munro  and  Charles 
H.  Haskins  the  serious  American  student  has 
received  or  may  receive  training  in  refined 
critical  methods  quite  equal  in  most  respects  to 
anything  to  be  obtained  abroad.  The  French 
influences  have  to  some  degree  displaced  the 
German  in  recent  years  and  most  American 
mediaevalists  finish  their  training  in  the  ficole 
des  Chartes,  a  substitute  for  which  scarcely  ex- 
ists in  America.  A  number  of  American 
scholars,  such  as  H.  B.  Adams,  E.  G.  Bourne, 
B.  A.  Hinsdale,  N.  M.  Trenholme,  F.  M.  Fling,  • 
Henry  Johnson,  H.  E.  Bourne,  W.  H.  Mace, 
J.  M.  Vincent  and  F.  H.  Foster,  have  made 
worthy  contributions  to  the  systematic  elabora- 
tion of  historical  methodology,  but  nothing  has 
appeared  in  this  field  in  .\merica  that  in  any 
y^ay  rivals  the  works  of  Bernheim  or  Langlois 
and-Seignabo*;.  Any  account  of  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  modern  methods  of  historical   re- 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


search  in  America  would  be  incomplete  with- 
out some  mention  of  the  work  of  Prof.  Albert 
Bushnell  Hart  of  Harvard.  While  he  has  not 
contributed  notably  to  the  further  refinement 
of  critical  methodology  in  historiography  bj'  his 
own  works,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  has 
been  easily  the  leader  in  promoting  the  produc- 
tion of  scholarly  contributions  to  the  field  of 
^American  history  and  government,  in  his  ca- 
pacity as  an  editor,  and  in  popularizing  the 
more  scholarly  methods. 

The  application  of  the  more  critical  methods 
to  the  field  of  American  history  has  resulted  in 
works  worthy  to  rank  with  the  best  European 
products  and  has  quite  reconstructed  the 
earlier  notions  of  American  national  develop- 
ment. The  period  of  colonization  has  been  ex- 
amined by  Professor  Osgood  a  student  of  Pro- 
fessor Burgess  and  Ranke,  and  his  monumental 
seven  volume  work  on  the  American  Colonics 
constitutes  the  highest  point  to  which  exact 
American  scholarship  has  attained,  and  is 
worthy  to  rank  with  the  writings  of  Gardiner 
and  Aulard.  The  relation  of  the  colonies  to 
British  foreign  policy  has  been  recast  by  Pro- 
fessor Osgood's  disciple,  George  Louis  Beer. 
Professor  Alvord,  in  a  scholarly  and  original 
work,  has  for  the  first  time  shown  the  full 
significance  of  the  problems  of  British  im- 
perial administration  west  of  the  Alleghenies 
for  the  preliminaries  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, and  has  finally  rescued  the  study  of  the 
beginnings  of  that  conflict  from  the  octopus 
of  Boston  Harbor.  Fisher,  Flick,  Siebert,  Ty- 
ler and  Van  Tyne  have  at  last  dealt  fairly  with 
the  Loyalists.  The  study  of  the  period  of  the 
formation  and  adoption  of  the  American  con- 
stitution has  finally  been  secularized  through 
the  detailed  and  critical  research  of  Prof. 
Max  Farrand  and  the  brilliant  essay  of  Pro- 
fessor Beard.  Professor  McMaster  has  sur- 
vej'ed— the  first  70  years  of  national  develop- 
ment with  not  only  scholarship,  but  a  broader 
and  more  synthetic  approach  than  has 
been  attained  in  any  other  comprehensive 
American  historical  work.  Much  more  super- 
ficial and  narrow  in  its  scope,  but  equally 
scholarly  is  Henrj^  Adams'  detailed  account  of 
American  foreign  policy  in  the  administra- 
tions of  Jefferson  and  Madison.  Professor 
Turner  and  his  students  have  applied  some- 
thing of  Che  scholarship  of  Osgood  and  the 
originality  and  the  breadth  of  interest  of  Mc- 
Master to  a  study  of  the  colonization  of  the 
West,  and  their  work  has  in  many  ways  super- 
seded the  vigorous  and  interesting  survey  by 
Roosevelt.  Professor  Turner's  "schooP'  is  the 
brst  illustrationlrl  America  of  the  combination 
ol'  exact  scholarship  with  the  synthetic 
leiidcncy  in  modern  historiography.  The  period 
of  the'  Civil  War  and  Reconstruction  has  been 
dealt  with  in  a  calm  and  temperate  fashion  by 
Mr.  Tames  Ford  Rhodes  in  a  detailed  work 
_which  for  objectivity  and  scholarship  fur- 
nisher the  only  rival  to  that  of  Professor  Os- 
t^ood.  The  same  period  and  the  subsequent 
generation  hafH-becn  covered  in  an  exhaustive 
manner  by  Professor  Dunning  and  his  students. 
Or  K.  P.  Oberholtzer,  a  disciple  of  Professor 
McMaster,  has  made  a  promising  beginning  in 
the  attempt  to  present  a  detailed  analysis  of  the 
histor>-  of  the  people  of  the  l^'nited  States  since 
the  Civil  War,  interpreted  in  the  original  and 
coniprehciisive     spirit     of     his     master.       The 


whole  period  of  national  history  has  been 
sketched  in  a  careful  and  dispassionate  manner 
by  James  Schouler,  and  Professor  Channing  is 
engaged  on  an  ambitious  attempt  to  trace  the 
history  of  the  United  States  from  the  period  of 
colonization  to  the  present  in  a  work  designed 
to  synthesize  the  results  of  the  critical  studies 
of  the  present  generation  of  historical  scholars, 
and  which,  if  completed,  bids  fair  to  become 
the  great  national  history  in  the  better  sense  of 
that  term.  The  character  of  the  best  American 
historical  scholarship  in  the  first  generation  of 
those  who  had  imbibed  the  newer  critical 
methods  is  to  be  discovered  in  the  co-operative 
< Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  America,* 
edited  by  Justin  Winsor.  A  much  more  com- 
prehensive and  representative  repertoire  of 
American  scholarship  of  a  slightly  more  recent 
type  is  to  be  found  in  the  ^American  Nation,' 
edited  by  Professor  Albert  Bushnell  Hart.  In 
addition  to  investigation  of  the  history  of  their 
own  country,  American  historians  have  made 
important  contributions  to  manv  other  periods 
and  phases  of  history.  Professor  Breasted  has 
earned  a  place  among  the  leaders  of  modern 
Egyptology  and  Rogers,  Hilprecht,  Jastrow, 
Olmstead  and  Goodspeed  have  done  creditable 
work  on  the  history  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria. 
Professor  Ferguson  is  the  world's  foremost 
authority  on  Hellenistic  Athens,  Westermann 
has  dealt  in  an  original  fashion  with  the  prov- 
inces of  the  Roman  imperial  system,  and  Bots- 
ford  ranged  over  the  whole  period  of  classical 
antiquity  with  both  insight  and  the  most  exact- 
ing scholarship.  In  the  field  of  mediaeval  his- 
tory Professor  Burr  has  mastered  the  Carol- 
ingian  period  and  is  easily  the  leading  author- 
ity in  Europe  or  America  on  the  history  of 
toleration ;  Larson  has  investigated  the  early 
mediaeval  htSTOTy~bf  England  and  Thompson 
has  dealt  with  the  growth  of  the  French  mon- 
archy under  Louis  VI ;  Munro  had  devoted 
himself  particularly  to  a  sttrdy^of  the  Crusades; 
the  part  played  by  the  Normans  in  the  history 
of  mediaeval  Europe  has  been  investigated  by 
Haskins  with  a  thoroughness  not  equaled  by 
anj^  other  American  or  European  scholar;  few 
if  any  English  scholars  can  rival  G.  B.  Adams' 
knowledge  of  the  constitutional  history  of 
mediaeval  England;  Henderson  has  summarized 
the  results  of  modern  scholarship  dealing  vvi{h 
mediaeval  Germany;  Emerton  has  contributed 
scholarly  and  detailed  manuals  covering  the 
entire  mediaeval  period ;  Lynn  Thorndike  has 
recently  presented  an  original  synthesis  of  the 
best  modern  scholarship  dealing  with  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  H.  O.  Taylor  has  furnished 
the  best  survey  of  the  intellectual  history  of 
this  period.  The  original  and  now  generally 
accepted  thesis  that  the  "commercial  revolu- 
tion*^ rather  than  the  "Renaissance"  or  the 
"Reformation**  marked  the  dawn  of  the  mod- 
ern world  has  furnished  the  centre  of  orienta- 
tion for  the  stimulating  works  of  Abbott,  Shep- 
herd, E.  G.  Bourne,  Merriman  and  Chc>-ney. 
The  French  Revolution  and  the  Napoleonic  pe- 
riod have  profited  by  the  works  of  H.  M. 
Stephens,  Fling,  Sloane,  H.  E.  Bourne  and 
Johnston.  Thayer  has  written  in  an  interest- 
ing fashion  on  the  history  of  Italy  from  the 
end  of  the  Napoleonic  regime  to  the  comple- 
tion of  unit'ication;  Henderson,  Schevill,  Ford 
and  Fay  have  treated  the  history  of  modem 
Germany;  Lybyer  has  been  the  only  American 


250 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


historian  to  devote  special  attention  to  the  mod- 
ern history  of  southeastern  Europe ;  and  C.  M. 
Andrews  and  Hazen  have  contributed  standard 
political  narratives  on  the  history  of  modern 
Europe.  In  Prof.  John  Bassett  Moore  the 
United  States  has  the  most  productive  and 
authoritative  student  of  the  history  of  interna- 
tional law  and  diplomacy,  and  D.  J.  Hill, 
J.  W.  Foster,  A.  C.  Cooli'dRe,  C.  R.  Fish  and 
E.  S.  Corwin  have  been  some  of  the  other 
American  writers  who  have  contributed  to  this 
field.  Church  history  has  attracted  a  large 
number  of  American  students.  H.  C.  Lea\ 
monographs  have  entitled  him  to  rank  with 
European  scholars  like  Harnack  and  Duchesne. 
G.  P.  Fisher  and  Philip  Schaflf  .sketched  the 
whole  history  of  the  Christian  Church.  Mc- 
Giffert  won  an  international  reputation  by  his 
edition  of  Euscbius  and  has  since  made  im- 
portant contributions  to  the  history  of  the  early 
Church.  The  rise  of  the  mediaeval  Church  has 
received  the  attention  of  Ayer  and  Flick.  The 
period  of  the  "Reformation^^  has  been  covered 
by  the  monographs  of  Preserved  Smith,  Emer- 
ton,  Faulkner,  Jackson  and  Jacobs.  W.  Walker 
has  provided  a  survey  of  Church  history  in 
both  Europe  and  America.  David  Schaff,  S.  M. 
Jackson  and  W.  W.  Rockwell  have  contributed 
to  this  field  by  valuable  editorial  labors,  and 
Professor  Rockwell  has  been  especially  active 
in  keeping  Americans  in  touch  with  the  latest 
developments  in  European  scholarship  in  this 
field.  The  primary  attention  of  European  his- 
torians to  ancient  and  mediaeval  history  —  a 
lingering  effect  of  humanism  and  romanticism 
—  has  left  its  impress  upon  American  scholar- 
ship and  has  led  to  a  neglect  of  modern  his- 
tory. The  younger  generation  of  American 
historians,  however,  by  devoting  their  energies 
primarily  to  modern  history,  have  tended  to 
make  a  salutary  break  with  tradition  and  are 
promising  to  equal  in  volume  and  quality  the 
contributions  that  their  former  teachers  made 
to  the  study  of  the  "Middle  Ages.» 

Historical  biography  in  the  United  States 
has  tended  to  take  the  form  of  a  great  number 
of  brief  biographies,  such  as  the  "American 
Statesmen  Series"  and  the  "Riverside  Biograph- 
ical Series,"  rather  than  being  limited  to  a  few 
notable  products.  Some  fine  biographies  have 
appeared,  however,  such  as  the  voluminous 
documentary  biography  of  Lincoln  by  Nicolay 
and  Hay,  the  excellent  biographies  of  Buchanan 
and  Webster  by  G.  T.  Curtis,  and  the  more 
recent  ones  of  Douglas  by  Allen  Johnson,  of 
Andrew  Jackson  by  J.  S.  Bassett,  and  of 
Stephen   Girard  by  J.   B.   McMaster. 

XI.  The  Industrial  and  Scientific  Revolu- 
tions AND  THE  Leading  Tendencies  in 
■^      Modern   Historiography. 

1.  The  Persistence  and  Development  of 
Earlier  Trends. —  While  the  major  portion  of 
the  progress  in  historiography  since  Ranke  has 
consisted  in  rise  of  new  and  sounder  tendencies 
there  have  been  important  improvements  in  the 
earlier  and  traditional  lines  of  development. 

In  the  first  place,  while  little  ^as  been 
achieved  that  was  not  implicit  in  the  methodo- 
logical system  of  Ranke,  there  have  been  some 
important  improvements  in  both  the  critique 
and  the  technique  of  historical  methodology 
since_  Ranke's  time.  The  fundamental  principles 
of   historical    criticism   have    been    refined   and 


systematized  in  the  admirable  works  of  Bern-  , 
heim  and  Langlois  and  Seignobos,  so  that  the 
beginner  may  now  have  at  his  disposal  a  more 
extended  discussion  of  all  phases  of  historical 
method  than  Ranke  was  ever  acquainted  with. 
There  has  also  been  a  great  improvement  in 
the  mechanical  accessories  of  historical  scholar- 
ship. Elaborate  bibliographies  of  the  historiog- 
raphy of  the  various  countries  have  been  pre- 
pared, of  which  those  by  Langlois,  Molinier, , 
Monod,  Dahlmann-Waitz  and  Gross  are  the' 
more  notable.  These  are  supplemented  by  cur- 
rent lists  of  the  new  works  which  appear,  pub- 
lished in  the  various  technical  historical  jour- 
nals, and  the  student  is  enabled  to  keep  thor- 
oughly abreast  of  the  literature  in  his  field. 
Remarkably  thorough  and  accurate  guides  to 
the  vast  collections  of  sources  of  national  and 
ecclesiastical  history  which  were  gathered  dur- 
ing the  19th  century  have  been  provided,  and 
the  modern  student  may  locate  in  a  few  minutes 
in  any  great  library  sources  which  might  have 
occupied  any  earlier  generation  in  months  of 
fruitless  searching.  Of  this  invaluable  type  of 
aid  the  monumental  works  of  Potthast  and 
Chevalier  are  most  worthy  of  mention.  Again, 
archives,  public  and  private,  have  been  opened 
more  freely  to  the  historical  scholar,  though  he 
is  still  excluded  from  the  more  recent  material. 
Nor  should  one  neglect  to  point  out  the  great 
contribution  to  efficiency,  expedition  and  accu- 
racy in  historical  investigation  which  has  come 
about  from  the  general  introduction  of  card 
catalogues,  filing  systems,  loose-leaf  note  books 
and  elaborate  schemes  for  indexing  and  cross- 
reference.  This  important  type  of  innovation* 
and  improvement  has  been  chiefly  the  W'ork  of 
American  scholars.  As  important  as  the  ad- 
vances in  bibliographical  and  other  mechanical 
aids  has  been  the  great  extension  and  im- 
provement of  the  teaching  profession  in  the 
department  of  history.  Under  the  guidance 
of  trained  scholars,  the  members  of  historical 
seminars,  though  of  mediocre  literary  talent 
may  contribute  more  exact  knowledge  to  the 
field  of  history  in  their  dissertations  than  was 
contained  in  many  volumes  of  the  older  and 
popular  literary  history.  Finally,  historical 
science  has,  after  two  centuries  of  delay, 
followed  the  lead  of  natural  science  and  be- 
come co-operative  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word.  National  historical  societies  have  been 
formed  in  all  the  kading  countries,  each  su^ 
porting  one  or  more  technical  journals.  It  is 
also  rare  now  that  a  single  authoritative  his- 
torian attempts  a  comprehensive  survey  of  a 
wide  field  of  history;  it  has  rather  come  to  be 
the  general  practice  to  produce  extensive  his- 
tories on  the  co-operative  plan  in  order  to  ' 
utilize  to  the  full  the  ability  of  specialists.  It 
would  seem  that  historiography  can  make  little 
more  progress  in  the  refinement  of  critical 
methodology.  It  only  remains  to  bring  modern 
history  as  far  as  possible  under  the  control  of 
the  same  exact  apparatus  of  research  that  has 
already  been  provided  for  mediaeval  and  church 
history. 

A  less  salutary  type  of  persistence  of  older 
tendencies  has  been  the  perpetuation  of  the 
political  fetish  of  Ranke  and  his  school.  A 
number  of  causes  have  accounted  for  this 
rather  curious  survival  of  a  strange  distortion 
of  historical  interests.  In  the  first  place,  a 
great  impulse  was  given  to  the  political  orienta- 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


»51 


tion  through  the  students  and  disciples  of 
Ranke  who  held  steadfastly  to  the  tenets  of 
their  master.  This  was  superseded  in  Germany 
by  the  more  violent  nationalism  and  political  pre- 
dilection of  Droysen,  Treitschke,  Von  Sybel 
and  the  others  of  the  Prussian  school.  The 
rise  of  nationalism  and  political  interests  in 
France  under  the  Third  Republic  kept  alive 
the  earlier  nationalistic  political  history  that 
had  before  been  stimulated  liy  the  interest  in 
the  episodes  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the 
conquests  of  Napoleon.  In  England  the  univcr- 
.  sal  conviction  as  to  the  supreme  political 
capacity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  seemingly  im- 
posed a  moral  obligation  upon  English  his- 
torians to  concentrate  their  attention  upon  the 
proofs  of  this  superiority.  In  America  the 
political  and  episodical  historiography  was 
stimulated  by  the  thrills  of  a  great  and  success- 
ful war  in  behalf  of  national  unity  and  was 
perpetuated  by  the  introduction  of  the  tenets  of 
Ranke  and  Droysen  by  their  returning  pupils, 
who  became  the  leaders  and  organizers  of  his- 
torical study  in  this  country.  Finally,  this  type 
of  history  received  a  last  source  of  inspiration 
from  the  recrudescence  of  nationalism  through- 
out the  world  as  an  inevitable  accompaniment 
of  the  imperialism  or  '^neo-mercantilism^^  which 
developed  more  or  less  universally  in  the  period 
of  the  **seventies*^  and  the  following  years. 
That  the  adherents  of  this  form  of  history  will 
gain  at  least  momentary  strength  and  encourage- 
ment from  the  revived  importance  of  national- 
ism and  militarism  growing  out  of  the  present 
World  War  is  scarcely  to  be  doiibted. 

2.  New  Developments  in  the  Study  and 
Interpretation  of  History. —  Important  as  has 
been  the  further  development  of  earlier  tenden- 
cies in  historiography  during  the  19th  century, 
this  has  been  dwarfed  into  insignificance  by  the 
great  advances  made  in  totally  new  directions 
or  in  channels  which  had  been  only  slightly 
foreshadowed  and  anticipated  in  earlier  epochs. 
The  critical  political  historians  provided  modern 
historiography  with  its  accurate  methods  of 
research  and  its  vast  compilations  of  primary 
sources.  But,  as  Professor  Shotwell  has  very 
aptly  said,  these  scholars  were  so  intensely  ab- 
sorbed in  the  task  of  perfecting  the  method- 
oiogy  oi  research  that  they  failed  to  discrimi- 
nate in  the  importance  of  the  events  which 
they  narrated.  It  has  become  the  task  of  an 
ever-increasing  group  of  progressive  historians 
to  promote  the  synthetic  tendencv  in  the  hope 
of  giving  history  a  more  natural  content  and 
a  better  balanced  body  of  subject-matter. 
While  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  basis  for 
many  of  the  new  developments  was  laid  by 
the  progress  of  earlier  periods  in  the  way  of 
creating  the  national  constitutional  state,  ex- 
panding the  European  consciousness  throughout 
the  world  by  the  commercial  revolution,  and  en- 
croaching upon  the  field  of  the  mysterious 
through  the  great  scientific  discoveries  in  the 
field  of  natural  science  during  the  17th  and  18th 
centuries,  there  can  be  no  question  that  most 
of  the  novel  elements  introduced  into  the  writ- 
ing and  the  outlook  of  the  historian  in  the 
last  century  were  the  product  of  the  va^^t 
transformations  in  social  conditions  and  intel- 
lectual interests  and  attitudes  since  the  first 
quarter  of  the  19th  century.  The  chief  reason 
for  the  great  transformation  in  the  historical 
outlook  in   the   last  century  has  been  the   fact 


that  the  "Industrial  Revolution"  and  the  pro- 
gress in  natural  and  social  science  have  com- 
pletely altered  not  only  the  material  conditions 
of  human  life,  but  also  the  whole  "Weltan- 
schauung" of  the  civilized  world.  A  more  com- 
plete reconstruction  of  the  whole  mode  of  life 
and  of  the  intellectual  orientation  of  civilized 
peoples  has  been  achieved  in  the  last  century " 
than  had  previously  taken  place  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Christian  era,  and  this  great 
change  could  not  but  at?ect  historical  concepts 
viewed  as  an  important  branch  of  intellectual 
interests. 

By  the  industrial  revolution,  which  was 
effected  between  1750  and  1850,  the  whole  basis 
of  life  was  profoundly  modified  and  the  former 
ideas  and  interests  quite  uprooted  and  dis- 
located. The  old  period  of  rural  stability  and 
repetition  was  broken  up  and  with  the  growth 
of  cities  the  possibilities  of  invention,  imitation 
and  progress  were  immensely  increased.  The 
changes  in  the  centres  of  population  and  in  the 
mode  of  life  gave  rise  to  new  and  strange 
social  problems  on  a  scale  hitherto  unknown, 
and  demanded  the  provision  of  some  adequate 
"science  of  society*'  to  serve  as  a  guide  in  their 
solution.  As  in  the  period  of  the  so-called 
"Renaissance,*  humanity  again  loomed  larger 
than  the  state  and  social  rather  than  purely 
political  interests  forged  to  the  front  in  his- 
torical as  in  other  social  sciences. 

Not  less  consequential  and  epoch-making 
were  the  notable  advances  in  natural  science  in 
the  19th  century  which  were  much  more  destruc- 
tive to  the  traditional  philosophy  of  life  than 
the  great  discoveries  of  the  16th  and  17th  cen- 
turies, in  that  the  scientific  work  of  the  earlier 
period  centered  chiefly  in  the  realm  of 
mechanics  and  other  fields  which  did  not 
directly  concern  the  problem  of  the  origin  and 
destiny  of  man,  while  those  of  the  19th  century 
had  a  direct  and  inevitable  bearing  upon  the 
interpretation  of  the  derivation  and  origin  of 
the  human  race  and  its  relation  to  the  rest  of 
the  organic  world.  Lyell  and  his  fellow  geol- 
ogists revealed  the  undreamed-of  antiquity  of 
the  earth  and  of  various  forms  of  animal  life. 
Lawrence,  Lamarck,  Chambers,  Darwin  and 
Wallace,  w^orking  from  both  geology  and 
biology,  suggested  and  later  proved  the  gradual 
and  "naturaP*  development  of  man  from  the 
lower  varieties  of  the  animal  kingdom.  The 
chronology  of  Africanus,  Eusebius  and  Jerome 
was  discredited  for  all  time  through  the  revela- 
tions of  pre-historic  archa?olog>'  in  the  hands 
of  Boucher  de  Perthes  and  Sir  John  Evans, 
and  the  'Chronicle'  of  Jerome  was  replaced  by 
the  'Classification  ethnologique'  of  de  Mortil- 
let.  "Adam"  was  reduced,  in  the  new  pcrspec-  . 
five  of  time,  from  the  originator  of  the  race  to 
a  fairly  close  contemporary  of  Darwin  himself. 
Man  was  revealed  as  the  product  of  natural 
causes  and  not  of  a  mysterious  creation,  in  the 
old  and  obscurantic  sense  of  the  term,  and  he 
became,  thereby,  a  legitimate  subject  for 
analysis,  particularly  at  the  hands  of  psy-  ' 
cholog>^  Along  with  this  progress  in  natural 
science  went  a  much  further  development  of 
critical  philosophy  and  the  subjection  of  scrip- 
tural authority  and  sacred  history,  already 
weakened  by  the  established  conclusions  of 
scientific  investigations,  to  the  same  candid  and 
critical  investigation  which  has  been  accorded 
to  secular  history  much  earlier.     The  spirit  of 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


Voltaire,   Hume   and  Gibbon   had  at   last  per- 
manently come  to  its  own. 

It  was  inevitable  that  these  sweeping  altera- 
tions in  man's  outlook  upon  life  should  pro- 
foundly affect  his  attitude  toward  the  study  of 
the  past,  as  well  as  his  interests  in  the  present 
and  future,  i  In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  indus- 
trial rcvolut'To'n  was  the  prime  mover  in  the 
social  transformations  of  the  period  it  was  not 
surprising  that  the  first  vigorous  reaction  again.it 
the  conventional  political  historiography  should 
come  through  the  avenue  of  a  greater  emphasis 

,  upon  the  economic  factors  and  the  commonplace 
facts  of  daily  life,  the  primary  importance  of 
which  was  demonstrated  by  the  historical  events 
of  the  19th  century^T  To  be  sure,  the  rationalist 
school  had  laid  coiisiderable  stress  upon  eco- 
nomic influences,  Heeren  had  shown  the  im- 
portance of  the  commercial  activities  of  antiq- 
uity, and  Moser  had  insisted  upon  the  vital  re- 
lation of  economic  factors  to  the  development 
of  political  organization,  but  these  were  only 
isolated  instances  of  more  than  the  usual  con- 
temporary insight  and  profundity  which  were 
almost  totally  overshadowed  and  engulfed  in  the 
episodical  and  biographical  historiography  of  ro- 
manticism and  in  the  political  bias  of  national- 
istic historiographv.  Economic  history,  as  a 
general  and  universal  movement  of  revolt  from 
the  narrow  political  historiography,  dates  from 
the  publication  of  Karl  Marx's  pamphlet  enti- 

'  tied,  the  *Holy  Family,^  in  1845,  and  his  joint 
work  with  Engels  three  years  later,  the  ^Com- 
munist Manifesto.^  While  few  of  the  leading 
figures  in  modern  economic  history  would  de- 
fend the  economic  determinism  of  Marx,  they 
would  at  least  contend  that  economic  events 
have  an  historical  significance  not  second  to  any 
other  category  of  facts,  and  that  to  pass  over 
them  in  silence,  as  did  writers  like  Droysen  and 
.  Sybel,  Stubbs  and  Freeman,  and  Burgess  and 
Hoist,  is  to  miss  much  of  the  significance  of 
any  period  and  inevitably  to  yield  but  an  im- 
perfect and  distorted  picture  of  any  epoch. 
It  is  important  to  note  that  the  new  economic 
history  was  not  a  break  with  the  exact  scholar- 
ship of  the  school  of  Rankc,  but  was  rather  an 
application  of  critical  scholarship  to  the  recov- 
ery of  our  knowledge  of  the  economic  life  of 
the  past  in  its  relation  to  the  totality  of  civili- 
zation. In  the  names  of  Roscher.  Knies.  Inama- 
Sternegg,  Nitzsch,  Schmoller  and  Bucher  in 
Germany;  of  Rogers,  Cunningham,  Ashley,  Gib- 
bins,  Hammond  and  Webb  in  England;  of  Lc- 
vasseur,  LePlay,  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Avenel  and 
Jaures  and  his  associates  in  France;  of  Koval- 
evsky  and  Vinogradoff  from  Russia;  and  of 
Bolles,  Veblen,  Bogart,  Coman,  Dewey,  Clark, 
Commons,  Gay,  Callender  and  Day  in  America, 
the  student  of  historiography  recognizes  scholars 
worthy  to  rank  with  the  best  disciples  of  Rankc 
in  the  field  of  critical  methodology.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  epoch-making  work  of  the  avowed 
economic  historians,  this  new  emphasis  upon 
economic  factors  in  history  has  filtered  into  the 
works  of  the  orthodox  school,  and  few  serious 

.  historical  works  are  now  attempted  which  do 
not  give  at  least  grudging  recognition  to  the  im- 
portance of  the  industrial  and  comm^ial  life 
of  a  people.  ^ 

/  Another  important  new  development  in  his- 

/"    torical  writing  which  grew  more  or  less  directly 

out  of  the   effects  of   the   industrial   revolution 

was  the  origin  of  sociology  and  the  influence  of 


the  sociological  point  of  view  upon  historical  , 
writing.  While  there  had  been  sociological 
tendencies  in  the  writings  of  earlier  publicists 
and  historians,  it  is  generally  agreed  that  the 
science  of  sociology  had  its  origin  in  the  neces- 
sity of  providing  a  general  "science  of  society'* 
to  criticize,  evaluate  and  guide  the  various  re- 
form movements  which  sprang  into  existence  as 
a  result  of  the  evils  of  the  social  and  economic?  . 
transition  which  accompanied  the  industrial 
revolution.  Its  two  great  original  systematizers 
were  Auguste  Comte  and  Herbert  Spencer. . 
The  influence  of  sociology  upon  history  has 
been  varied  and  profound.  One  aspect  of  this 
influence  was  evident  in  Buckle's  avowed  desire 
to  follow  Comic's  suggestion  of  the  existence 
of  well  defined  laws  of  historical  development 
and  to  combine  this  with  Quetelet's  statistical 
method  cf  measuring  social  phenomena,  and 
thus  to  arrive  at  an  exact  science  of  historical 
development  wholly  comparable  to  the  precision 
reached  in  natural  science.  While  Buckle's  sug- 
gestions have  been  only  moderately  developed, 
it  has  long  since  been  recognized  that  few  valid 
"laws  of  historical  development  can  be  discov- 
ered which  do  not  rest  upon  the  firm  basis  of 
adequate  statistical  study.  A  much  more  far- 
reaching  reaction  of  sociology  upon  historiog- 
raphy has  been  its  influence  in  broadening  the 
content  of  history,  so  as  to  include  all  of  the 
important  phases  of  social  life  and  activity. 
This  type  of  departure  from  orthodox  procedure 
gained  its  first  great  success  in  the  world  famous 
work  of  John  Richard  Green.  Less  popular 
but  equally  able  were  Professor  Dill's  volumes  • 
on  the  social  phases  of  Roman  imperial  history. 
While  Green  found  few  immediate  followers 
among  his  countrymen,  who,  with  the  exception 
of  Lecky,  for  the  time  being  held  faithfully  to 
the  canons  of  Freeman,  Stubbs  and  Seeley,  the 
younger  generation,  led  by  such  scholars  as  Pol- 
lard, Marvin,  Zimmern  and  Slater  have  organ- 
ized a  powerful  movement  in  favor  of  a  re- 
vival of  Green's  broad  social  mode  of  approach 
to  historical  problerns.  Germany  has  probably 
been  most  prolific  in  the  production  of  his- 
torians affected  by  the  sociological  movement. 
In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  Riehl  and 
Freytag  gathered  data  for  the  first  comperhen- 
sive  picture  of  the  social  history  of  Germany, 
Friedlander  described  the  social  life  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  Buckhardt  drew  the  classic 
picture  of  the  civilization  of  the  Renaissance. 
A  quarter  of  a  century  later  Janssen,  from  a 
warmly  Catholic  standpoint,  described  the  so- 
cial conditions  of  Germany  in  the  epoch  of  the  . 
Reformation.  Erman  provided  the  first  reliable 
and  comprehensive  account  of  the  civilization  of  . 
sncient  Egypt.  The  great  impulse  to  social  his- 
tory in  Germany,  however,  came  though  the 
labors  of  the  able  Leipzig  professor,  Karl  Lam-  , 
precht,  and  his  supporters  and  co-workers 
Gothein,  Steinhausen  and  Breyssig.  In  France 
the  effect  of  the  new  social  impulses  has  been 
less  apparent  because  the  French  historians 
have  never  been  so  narrowly  political  as  the 
German  and  English  schools  of  history-;- even 
such  technical  and  ultra-critical  medirevalists  as 
Luchaire,  Giry  and  Monod  finding  time  to  dis- 
cuss social  conditions  in  the  mediaeval  period.  » 
Rambaud  is  probabl}'  the  nearest  French  coun- 
terpart to  Green.  The  far  greater  breadt!i 
of  view  in  French  historiography  than  in  Eng- 
lish can  best  be  appreciated  by  a  comparison  of 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


the  tables  of  contents  of  the  'Histoire  generale* 
and  the  'Histoire  de  France'  with  those  of  the 
^Cambridge  Alediaeval  History'  and  the  'Cam- 
bridge Modern  History.'  In  Italy.  Ferrero  has 
upheld  the  social  point  of  view  in  his  history  of 
'  ancient  Rome.  Worthy  and  successful  imita- 
tions of  Green's  sociological  mode  of  interpre- 
tation are  to  be  found  also  in  Blok's  ^History 
of  the  Dutch  People,'  and  in  Kluchevsky's  pub- 
lication of  his  lectures  on  the  development  of 
the  Russian  national  culture  and  political 
organization.  Among  American  historians 
McMaster  has  followed  most  faithfully  in  the 
footsteps  of  Green,  and  Turner  has  exhibited 
a   breadth   of   view   not   less   notable   than   his 

•  exacting  scholarship  in' tracing  the  colonization 
of  the  West.  Cheyney's  work  in  the  field  of 
English  history  has  always  been  marked  by  a 
broad  and  well-balanced  interpretation.  Nor 
should  one  forget  the  promising  beginnings  in 
a  social  interpretation  of  American  history  by 
such  writers  as  W.  E.  Dodd  and  Carl  Becker, 
and    the    application    of    similar    methods    to 

•  modern  European  history  by  Hayes,  Lingelbach 
and  others.  Professors  Breasted  and  Jastrow 
have   done  notable  work  in   reconstructing  the 

■  civilization  of  oriental  antiquity.  Finally, 
Professor  Shotwell  of  Columbia,  while  his  own 
written  contributions  have  not  been  extensive, 
has  rivalled  Maitland  in  stimulating  an  enthu- 
siastic interest  in  social  history  on  the  part  of 
an  ever  increasing  group  of  disciples.  Another 
very  significant  outgrowth  of  the  sociological 
movement  has  been  its  reaction  upon  th?  field 
of  constitutional  history.  While  Moser  had 
anticipated  the  recent  movement  in  stressing 
the  creative  influence  of  social  and  economic 
forces  in  shaping  political  forms  and  institu- 
tions, the  first  great  modern  school,  of  consti- 
tutional historians,  represented  in  Germany  by 
Waitz  and  Gneist,  in  England  by  Stubbs,  and 
in  America  by  Hoist  and  Burgess,  had  been 
content  to  trace  constitutional  development  in 
a  purely  external  and  formal  legalistic  manner, 
or  had  represented  it  as  a  product  of  the  in- 
fluences of  powerful  personalities.  The  spirit 
of  Moser  first  reappeared  in  the  uncompleted 
work  of  Alexis  de  Tocqueville  on  the  consti- 
tutional developments  in  18th  century  France, 
which  forever  discredited  the  cataclysmic  inter- 
pretation of  the  French  Revolution  by  showing 
how  it  was  the  natural  and  logical  culmination 
of  fundamental  social  and  economic  forces 
which  had  been  operating  for  centuries.  A  simi- 
lar mode  of  approach  was  evident  in  the  bril- 
liant contributions  of  Fustel  de  Coulanges  to 
the  constitutional  history  of  France  in  the  early 
meiliseval  period.  The  influence  of  social  and 
psychic  forces  in  legal  and  constitutional  his- 
ton  was  fully  recognized  in  Otto  Gierke's 
monumental  work  on  "Genossenschaftsrecht," 
perhaps,  the  most  notable  German  contribu- 
tion to  the  newer  tendencies  in  constitutional 
interpretation,  and  also  in  Brunner's  monu- 
niCTital  history  of  early  Germanic  law  and 
Ih(.riiig's  extensive  studies  in  comparative 
jurisprudence.  What  Tocqueville  and  Cou- 
laiiuc  s  accomplished  for  France  was  achieved  for 
Enijlish  constitutional  history  by  the  powerful, 
orie  nal  and  unbiased  mind  of  Gierke's  disciple, 
Frc'.erick  W.  \[aitland,  who  for  the  first  time 
ctfc-  ivcly  demonstrated  the  social  and  economic 
background  of  English  legal  history  and  made 
clea-    the   futility  of  a  purely  legalistic  recon- 


struction of  constitutional  development.  Mait- 
land's  work  in  English  legal  history  has  been 
carried  on  by  his  friend,  Paul  Vinogradoff^,  with 
a  more  impressive,  if  less  subtle,  scholarship, 
and  with  equal  productivity.  In  America  a 
worthy  disciple  of  Maitland  has  appeared  in 
Prof.  Charles  A.  Beard,  who  not  only  shares 
Maitland's  approach  to  constitutional  problems, 
but  rivals  him  in  his  disregard  of  traditional 
and  orthodox  opinions. 

A  direct  outgrowth  of  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion which  has  been  of  the  utmost  significance 
for  both  historical  events  and  historiography 
has  been  the  neo-mcrcantilism  or  national  impe- 
rialism which  has  developed  since  about  1875 
as  a  result  of  the  need  for  new  markets  and  in- 
vestment opportunities  which  was  created  by 
the  increase  of  both  commodities  and  capital 
through  the  great  revolution  in  industry  be- 
tween 1800  and  1875.  The  process  has  repeated 
in  a  much  more  thorough-guing  way  the  com- 
mercial revolution  of  three  centuries  earlier. 
European  civilization  was  again  brought  into 
contact  with  different  cultures  of  every  conceiv- 
able type,  and  the  possession  of  the  scientific 
knowledge  that  had  been  accumulating  since 
1650  was  of  the  greatest  value  and  assistance 
in  appropriating  the  new  discoveries.  The  re- 
actions of  this  movement  upon  historiography 
have  been  nearly  as  diverse  as  the  civilizations 
and  cultures  which  have  been  discovered.  Its 
more  unfortunate  results  have  been  a  perpetu- 
ation of  ardent  national  sentiment  in  historical 
writing  and  a  stimulation  of  racial  egoism  on 
the  part  of  European  and  American  historians. 
Its  more  favorable  effects  upon  historiography, 
as  exhibited  in  the  writings  of  the  more 
thoughtful  historians,  have  been  a  broadening 
of  the  knowledge  of  mankind,  the  enriching  of 
the  stores  of  historical  information,  an  increase 
of  tolerance  for  cultures  different  from  our  own 
and  the  great  stimulation  of  the  attention  of  the 
historian  and  publicist  to  the  new  social,  eco- 
nomic and  administrative  problems  created  and 
to  their  solution  in  harmony  with  the  principles 
of  enlightenment  and  humanity.  Among  the 
historians  and  publicists  who  have  given  espe- 
cial attention  to  these  subjects  have  been  Brj'ce, 
Douglas,  Hobhouse,  Hobson,  Johnston,  Keltie, 
Kidd,  Lewin,  Macdonald,  Rose  and  Skrine  in 
England;  Bordier,  Cordier,  Gaffarel,  Leroy- 
Beaulieu,  Piquet  and  Rambaud  in  France;  Mei- 
iiecke,  Meyer,  Pcicrs  and  Zimmermann  in  Ger- 
many; and  Blakcslee,  Harris,  Hornbeck,  Jones, 
Keller,  Krehbicl,  Latourette,  Morris,  Reinsch 
and  Shepherd  in  America.  On  the  whole,  the 
movement  has  tended  to  broaden  the  historical 
outlook  not  only  with  respect  to  geographical 
space,  but  also  with  regard  to  the  scope  of  the 
historian's  interests.  Especially  significant  has  ■ 
leen  the  interest  that  it  has  aroused  in  the  his- 
tory of  international  relations. 

A  further  significant  innovation,  which  was 
i'l  part  a  product  of  the  concentration  of  popu- 
lition  due  to  the  industrial  revolution  and  in 
I  art  an  outgrowth  of  the  more  scientific  ap- 
proach to  the  study  of  social  and  psychic  phe- 
nomena, has  been  the  rise  of  social  psychology 
and  its  reaction  upon  historj-.  Voltaire  had 
t'circshadowed  the  psychological  interpretation 
hy  his  doctrine  of  *thc  genius  of  a  people,''  btu 
this  concept  in  the  hands  of  Voltaire  was  es.sen- 
tially  non-historical.  He  regarded  national 
character   as    something   fixed   and    immutable,- 


i354 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


and  he  made  little  attempt  to  explain  its  origin. 
The  romanticists  had  improved  somewhat  on 
Voltaire's  conception  hj-  viewing  the  develop- 
ment of  civilization  as  the  product  of  obscure 
psychic  or  spiritual  forces,  but  they  even  denied 
the  possibility  of  discovering  or  analyzing  the 
nature  or  operation  of  this  process  of  psychic 
causation.  Ranke  and  his  school  had  borrowed 
from  the  romanticists  the  doctrine  of  the  'Zeit- 
geist,*' but  they  had  been  content  to  describe  its 
varied  manifestations  in  different  periods  and 
made  no  attempt  to  anah'ze  its  content  or  to 
account  for  its  origin  or  mutations.  With  the 
growth  of  cities  and  the  means  of  commimica- 
tion  during  the  industrial  revolution  and  the  re- 
sulting increase  of  social  contacts  and  of  the 
volume  of  psychic  interstimulation,  and  with  the 
development  of  modern  science  wath  its  empha- 
sis upon  the  amenability  of  human  activities  to 
psychological  analysis,  there  gradually  arose  a 
science  of  collective  or  social  psychology,  which 
first  made  its  appearance  in  the  work  of  Lewes, 
Bagehot,  Lazarus  and  Steinhal  and  was  de- 
veloped by  Wundt  and  Dilthey  in  Germany;  by 
Fouillee,  Guyau,  Tarde,  Durkheim  and  Le  Bon 
in  France,  by  Sighele  in  Italy;  by  McDougall, 
Trotter  and  Wallas  in  England;  and  by  Gid- 
dings,  Sumner,  Ross,  Cooley  and  Ellwood  in 
America.  While  this  novel  development  of 
psychology  was  at  first  applied  either  to  abstract 
,  or  contemporary  problems,  it  soon  began  to  re- 
act upon  historical  interpretations.  If  the  col- 
lective psychology  was  so  all-important  a  factor 
in  recent  times  it  was  natural  for  the  original 
historian  to  ask  the  question  as  to  why  it  had 
not  been  of  fundamental  significance  in  every 
age.  From  a  semi-obscurantic  view  of  a  "Welt- 
geist''  and  a  "Zeitgeist,*'  which  were  either  held 
to  be  unanalyzable  or  were  left  without  analysis, 
the  progressive  historians  turned  to  an  attempt 
to  discover  and  evaluate  the  factors  which  have 
produced  the  particular  collective  psychology 
of  various  ages  and  peoples,  and  to  an  effort  to 
account  for  the  transformations  of  intellectual 
reactions  through  the  centuries.  This  line  of 
approach  was  foreshadowed  by  Comte's  famous 
formulation  of  the  three  stages  of  the  develop- 
ment of  psychic  reactions.  _  The  transition  from 
romanticism  to  the  more  scientific  collective  psy- 
chological approach  was  best  exemplified  by 
Taine,  who  was  never  quite  able  to  free  himself 
from  the  obscurantic  trends  of  romanticism. 
The  first  and  the  most  distinguished  exponent 
of  this  newer  line  of  approach  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  historj^  through  the  genetic  study  of 
the  transformation  of  the  collective  psychology 
was  the  original  Leipzig  professor,  Karl  Lam- 

*  precht,  who  not  only  set  forth  an  elaborate  the- 
oretical justification  of  his  methods,  but  also 
illustrated  them  in  a  monumental  survey  of 
German  history.  Lamprecht's  principles  have 
been  valiantly  defended  by  some  enthusiastic 
and  progres.sive  scholars  in  every  civilized 
country.  While  the  avowed  exponents  of 
the  value  of  an  interpretation  of  history 
in  terms  of  the  changinj,^  attitudes  of  the 
intellectual  classes  have  as  yet  been  relatively 
few,  the  volume  of  literature  which  has  been 
produced  by  them  and  others  w-hirh  serves  to 
substantiate  their  thesis  has  already  become 
considerable.     In  England  Lecky's  youthful  but 

.  brilliant  study  of  the  development  of  rational- 
ism in  modern  times ;  John  Morley's  voluminous 


appreciation  of  the  contributions  of  the  French 
"Philosophes"  of  the  18th  century;  Leslie  Steph- 
en's masterly  sketch  of  the  intellectual  history 
of  England  in  the  same  period;  Poole's  study  of  ^ 
mediaeval  thought;  the  solid  contributions  of' 
Barker,  Figgis  and  Carlyle  to  political  thought 
from  classical  to  modern  times;  the  studies  in 
the  history  of  the  heroic  struggle  against  ob- 
scurantism which  have  been  produced  by 
Bury,  McCabe  and  Robertson ;  A.  W.  Benn's 
survey  of  English  rationalism  in  the  last  cen- 
tury ;  and,  above  all,  J.  T.  Merz's  monumental, 
exposition  of  the  progress  of  thought  and 
science  in  19th  century  Europe,  have  been  the 
more  notable  examples  of  the  growing  estimate 
of  the  significance  of  intellectual  history.  All 
students  of  historiography  and  intellectual  his- 
tory are  indebted  to  the  Scotch  savant,  Robert 
Flint,  for  erudite  contributions  to  the  history ' 
of  the  philosophy  of  history.  In  Germany 
the  more  important  contributions  to  this  new 
field  have  been  the  massive  work  of  Theodor 
Gomperz  on  Greek  thought;  the  brilliant  and 
original  contributions  of  Wilhelm  Dilthey  and 
Wilhelm  Windelband  to  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy; Adolph  Harnack's  unique  study  of  the 
development  of  Christian  dogma ;  Otto  Gierke's  , 
great  survey  of  the  evolution  of  certain  phases 
of  political  theory;  and  the  studies  in  the  his- 
tory of  sociological  thought  by  Paul  Barth  and 
Ludwig  Stein.  France  has  been  creditably  rep- 
resented by  the  essays  of  Renan  and  fimile  Fag- 
uet ;  the  stimulating  studies  of  the  development 
of  human  thought  from  primitive  times  to  the 
present  by  L.  Levy-Bruhl ;  the  many  brilliant 
monographs  of  fimile  Durkheim  and  his  school 
on  the  most  diverse  phases  of  intellectual  his- 
tory; Solomon  Reinach's  encyclopedic  contri- 
butions to  every  department  of.  the  history  of 
thought  and  culture;  and  the  notable  works  of 
A.  Franck,  Faguet  and  Paul  Janet  in  the  field 
of  the  history  of  political  theory.  Jn  Italy  Vico 
has  found  a  worthy  successor  in  Benedetto 
Croce,  and  the  Scandinavian  nations  are  ably 
represented  by  the  labors  of  Georg  Brandes  and 
Harold  HoflFding.  In  America  this  fertile  field 
was  first  cultivated  by  John  W.  Draper,  whose 
once  popular  works  have  long  since  become 
antiquated.  The  most  widely  read  American 
work  on  intellectual  history  was  Andrew  Dick-, 
son  White's  powerful  polemic  against  obscuran- 
tism, which  probably  did  more  than  any  other 
single  influence  to  bring  American  thought  into 
a  proper  orientation  with  the  progress  of  mod- 
ern science  and  criticism  in  every  field.  Since 
that  time  Mr.  Henry  Osborn  Taylor  has  pro- 
vided the  public  with  a  scholarly  survey  of  the 
intellectual  history  of  Europe  from  the  period 
of  Roman  decadence  to  Dante.  Mr.  Henry  C. 
Lea  has  dealt  with  several  phases  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  mediaeval  church  to  intellectual 
progress.  Prof.  George  L.  Burr  has  de-  • 
voted  his  life  to  an  investigation  of  the  history 
of  toleration,  the  results  of  which  he  has  fore- 
cast in  a  number  of  precious  articles  and  mono- 
graphs. Prof.  William  A.  Dunning  has  pre- 
sented the  first  complete  survey  of  the  his- 
tory of  political  theory  since  the  publication  of 
the  classic  work  of  fanct.  Professors  W.  C. 
Abbott  and  W.  R.  Shepherd  have  devoted  them- 
selves to  an  investigation  of  the  reaction  of  the 
commercial  revolution  on  European  thought  and 
culture.     McGifTert  has  sketched  the  history  of 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


255 


modern  religious  thought  in  a  brilliant  fash- 
ion. Finally,  Prof.  James  Harvey  Robinson 
has  not  only  aroused  an  ardent  interest  in  intel- 
lectual history  on  the  part  of  the  large  number 
of  enthusiastic  students  who  have  attended  his 
stimulating  lectures  at  Columbia  University, 
but  is  now  engaged  on  what  promises  to  be  the 
first  complete  summary  of  the  transformation^ 
in  the  intellectual  reactions  of  humanity.  In 
this  same  field  of  intellectual  history  probably 
belong  the  valuable  researches  into  the  histor\ 
of  natural  science  in  its  relation  to  the  progress 
of  civilization  which  have  been  carried  on  by 
Karl  Pearson,  Shipley  and  Whetham  in  Eng- 
land; Du  Bois-Reymond,  Mach,  Ostwald  and 
Dannemann  in  Germany;  Sarton  in  Belgium; 
Tannery  and  Duhem  in  France ;  and  Sedgwick, 
Tyler,  Libby,  and  L.  Thorndike  in  America. 
Here  also  belong  the  contributions  to  the  field 
of  the  history  of  aesthetics  which  has  been  cul- 
tivated by  Symonds,  Ruskin,  Mahaffy  and  Mur- 
ray in  England;  by  Winckelmann,  Burckhardt, 
Gervinus,  Gregorovius,  Woltmann  and  Liibke  in 
Germany;  by  Renan,  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine  and 
Reinach  in  France;  and  by  Charles  Eliot  Nor- 
ton and  Ralph  Adams  Cram  in  America.  Nor 
should  one  forget  the  many  stimulating  con- 
tributions of  such  writers  as  James,  Royce, 
Dewey,  Hall  and  Santayana,  in  the  effort  to 
make  the  more  original  and  helpful  trends  in 
philosophy  and  psychology  the  common  prop- 
erty of  the  intellectual  classes. 

The  discussion  of  the  extraordinary  develop- 
ment of  intellectual  history  in  the  last  half  cen- 
tury furnishes  the  logical  transition  from  a  dis- 
cussion of  those  recent  trends  in  historiography 
which  have  grown  primarily  out  of  the  indus- 
trial revolution  to  those  which  have  been  a 
product  of  the  remarkable  progress  in  natural 
science  in  the  last  hundred  years.  As  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  was  the  great  event  in  the 
economic  and  social  history  of  the  19th  century, 
so  the  discovery  of  the  Darwinian  theory  of 
evolution  was  the  central  fact  in  the  develop- 
ment of  natural  science  in  this  period.  While, 
as  Professor  Osborn  and  others  have  shown, 
the  idea  of  evolution  is  an  old  one  which  orig- 
inated in  a  certain  crude  and  formal  sense,  at 
least,  with  the  same  Ionic  Greeks  that  began 
the  writing  of  prose  and  of  history,  its  true 
significance  as  a  fact  in  science  and  philosophy 
began  with  the  publication  of  Darwin's  'Origin 
of  the  Species'  in  1859.  With  the  subsequent 
controversies  over  the  details  of  the  doctrine  of 
natural  selection  one  is  not  here  concerned.  Its 
reaction  upon  the  outlook  of  the  alert  and  pro- 
gressive historical  student  was  profound.  Spen- 
cer worked  over  the  whole  field  of  social  sci- 
ence from  the  evolutionary  standpoint  and  gave 
it  a  genetic  trend  and  meaning  from  which  it 
could  never  escape.  Enterprising  biologists  and 
sociologists  like  Schallmayer  and  Ammon  in 
Ciermany,  Lapouge  in  France,  Galton  in  Eng- 
land and  Keller  in  America  have  attempted  to 
v.ork  out  a  science  of  social  evolution  con- 
ceived in  terms  of  biological  evolution  carried 
ever  into  the  social  field.  Others,  among  them 
^;■veral  distinguished  historians,  have  essayed 
histories  of  religion  and  ethics  based  upon  the 
lu'w  revolutionary  conceptions  and  criteria.  In 
th:s  field  the  work  of  Spencer,  Leck-y,  Leslie 
Stephen,  Kidd,  Hobhouse,  Fiskc  and  Suther- 
land has  been  most  notable.  Finally,  an  at- 
tempt to  put   the  history  of  law   and  politics 


upon  an  evolutionary  basis  was  initiated  in  the 
suggestive  writings  of  the  "organic"  school  of 
sociologists  and  political  scientists  and  of 
Maine,  Bagehot  and  Ritchie.  On  the  whole, 
however,  the  outstanding  reaction  of  the  new 
evolutionary  conceptions  upon  historiography 
did  not  consist  so  much  in  the  various  special 
phases  of  their  application  to  historical  prob- 
lerns  which  have  been  mentioned  above  as  in 
fixing  upon  the  historian's  mind  the  perception 
of  the  genetic  nature  of  the  social  process  and 
in  giving  him  a  firm  basis  upon  which  to  develop 
a  sound  theory  of  progress. 

With  the  general  acceptance  of  the  evolution- 
ary hypothesis  as  to  the  origin  and  development 
of  the  human  race  it  was  inevitable  that  much 
greater  attention  would  be  given  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  physical  environment  upon  his- 
torical development.  The  general  notion  of  the 
effect  of  physical  environment  upon  human 
types  and  their  behavior  was  an  exceedingly  old 
one  which  had  originated  with  Hippocrates 
and  had  been  passed  on  through  the  ages  by 
Aristotle,  Strabo,  Vitruvius,  Aquinas,  Ibn 
Khaldun,  Bodin  and  Montesquieu.  While  their 
general  observations  had  some  rough  similarity 
to  the  conclusions  of  modern  students,  their  ex- 
planations of  environmental  causation  were 
most  crude,  being  based  primarily  upon  the 
doctrine  of  the  alleged  planetary  influences 
upon  the  physiological  processes  of  the  human 
body.  The  foundations  of  a  scientific  study  of 
the  relation  between  geography  and  history 
were  laid  by  the  monumental  studies  of  Karl 
Ritter  in  the  first  half  of  the  19th  century, 
which  were  interpreted  to  the  public  in  a  more 
popular  form  by  Guyot.  Ritter  found  a  worthy 
successor  in  Friedrich  Ratzel  whose  profound 
and  voluminous  works  are  conventionally  held 
to  have  founded  the  science  of  anthropogeog- 
raphy.  His  researches  were  rivalled^  in  France 
by  those  of  filisee  Reclus  and  were  interpreted 
to  the  English  and  American  world  by  his 
pupil,  Miss  Ellen  Semple.  In  addition  to  the 
systematic  works  of  Ratzel  and  Reclus.  many 
suggestive  contributions  have  been  made  to 
special  phases  of  the  influence  of  geography 
upon  histo^y^  Metchnikoff  has  pointed  out  the 
significance  of  the  great  river  systems  of  the 
world  in  the  development  of  the  chief  historic 
civilizations.  Demolins  has  dwelt  in  detail 
upon  the  great  importance  for  liistory  of  the 
configuration  of  the  land  which  has  determined 
the  routes  which  the  peoples  have  travelled  in 
their  various  dispersals  from  original  seats  of 
culture.  Especially  noteworthy  has  been  the 
suggestive,  if  not  entirely  convincing,  work  of 
Professor  Huntington,  whose  investigations  in 
Asia  Minor  have  enabled  him  to  ascertain  the 
existence  of  considerable  climatic  oscillations  in 
the  past  which  throw  new  light  on  the  hitherto 
unexplained  problems  of  the  shifting  of  the 
centres  of  civilization  from  Eg\-pt  to  north- 
western Europe  and  of  the  invasions  of  Eurooe 
by  successive  waves  of  .Asiatic  peoples.  The 
net  result  of  this  work  of  students  of  anthropo- 
geography  has  been  to  compel  every  self- 
respecting  historian  to  acquire  some  knowledge  ' 
of  the  geographical  setting  of  a  nation  before 
attempting  to  narrate  its  history.  Historians 
have  not  been  slow  to  appreciate  the  value  of 
these  significant  studies  upon  the  relation  of 
geography  to  the  development  of  civilization. 
Professor   George  has  produced  a  stimulating 


256 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


attempt  to  indicate  the  general  dependence  of 
histon-,  particularly  in  its  military  aspects,  upon 
geographical  conditions.  Professor  Myres  has 
sketched  in  a  brilliant  fashion  the  geographic 
background  of  the  rise  of  the  earliest  seats  of 
civilization.  The  signififrnce  of  geographical 
elements  in  the  history  ^of  antiquity  has  been 
abundantly  recognized  by  Professors  Hogarth, 
Olmstead"  and  Breasted.  Ernst  Curtius,  a 
disciple  of  Ritter,  for  the  first  time  made  clear 
the  geographical  basis  of  the  history  of  Greece. 
Freeman  described  in  great  detail  the  topog- 
raphy of  Sicily.  Nissen  has  shown  with  admir- 
able thoroughness  the  effect  of  Italy's  topog- 
raphy and  situation  upon  its  historical  develop- 
ment. The  importance  of  local  geographical 
conditions  for  the  development  of  national  his- 
tory was  made  apparent  in  the  case  of  France 
by  Michelet ;  with  regard  to  England  by  Green ; 
for  Germany  by  Riehl ;  and  with  respect  to  the 
settlement  and  history  of  North  America  by 
Payne,  Shaler,  Semple,  Hulbert,  Brigham  and 
Turner.  Finally,  Buckle  and  Hellwald  have, 
with  less  succcbs,  attempted  general  surveys 
based  upon  the  conception  of  the  interdepend- 
ence of  nature  and  the  human  mind,  while  Hel- 
molt  has  presided  over  the  production  of  the 
first  extensive  co-operative  history  which  has 
made  a  consistent  attempt  to  emphasize  the 
anthropological  and  geographical  factors  in  his- 
torical development  according  to  the  general 
doctrines  of  Ratzel.  The  above  bald  enumer- 
ation of  the  chief  phases  of  progress  in  modern 
anthropo-geography  and  its  contributions  to  his- 
torical interpretation,  perhaps,  calls  for  some 
critical  reservations.  In  no  field  has  there  been 
greater  exaggeration  of  a  single  set  of  "causes,*^ 
or  a  more  persistent  flouting  of  the  rules  of 
critical  methodology.  Particularly  have  the 
adherents  of  this  type  of  interpretation  failed 
to  distinguish  between  a  ^'conditioning^^  and  a 
"determining*^  influence.  Finally,  it  is  a  gen- 
erally accepted  doctrine  _  among  all  critical 
students  of  cultural  evolution  that  environmen- 
tal influences  decrease  in  importance  in  propor- 
tion as  the  progress  of  science  and  civilization 
enables  man  to  subdue  nature  to  his  own  pur- 
poses. For  these  valuable  criticisms  of  too 
enthusiastic  an  acceptance  of  the  geographical 
interpretation  students  are  more  indebted  to 
the  analytical  anthropologists,  such  as  Boas, 
Wissler,  Lowie  and  Goldenweiser,  than  to  the 
criticism  of  historians. 

Even  more  direct  and  vital  in  its  influence 
upon  historiography  was  the  new  science  of 
anthropology,  which,  in  its  modern  form,  was 
a  product  of  the  new  evolutionary  concepts 
applied  to  the  study  of  mankind  as  a  unity. 
While  not  ignoring  the  contributions  of  earlier 
'  students,  modern  anthropology  owed  its  origin 
primarily  to  the  researches  and  writings  of 
Tylor  in  England,  Bastian  in  Germany  and 
Boas  in  America.  Its  purpose,  according  to 
Professor  Boas,  is  "to  reconstruct  the  early 
history  of  mankind,  and,  wherever  possible,^  to 
express,  in  the  form  of  laws  ever-recurring 
modes  of  historical  happcninf^s."  The  chief 
point  of  contact  between  an<hropolog>'  and  his- 
tory is  found  in  the  attempt  of  the  former  to 
'  discover  and  formulate  the  laws  of  cultural 
evolution.  With  the  controversies  between  the 
older  school  of  unilateral  evolutionists,  repre- 
sented by  Spencer,  Avebury,  Morgan  and 
Frazer,  the  more  recent  advocates  of  the  doc- 


trine of  "diffusion, »  such  as  F.  Graebner, 
Rivers  and  Elliott  Smith,  and  the  exponents  of 
the  so-called  theory  of  "convergent  develop- 
ment" of  cultural  similarities  and  repetitions, 
among  the  most  important  of  whom  are 
Ehrenreich,  Boas,  Lowie  and  Goldenweiser,  it 
will  be  impossible  to  deal  in  this  place.  It  will 
be  sufficient  to  insist  upon  the  fact  that  no 
historian  can  regard  himself  as  competent  to 
attempt  any  large  synthesis  of  historical  ma- 
terial without  having  thoroughly  acquainted 
himself  with  these  fundamental  attempts  to 
/bring  definite  laws  of  development  out  of  the 
''  chaos  of  historical  facts.  An  attempt  to  link 
up  cultural  anthropologv  with  a  dynamic  his- 
tory has  recently  been  made  in  two  thoughtful 
books  by  Professor  Teggart  of  the  University 
of  California.  .Dr.  Goldenweiser  in  a  recent" 
brilliant  article  has  endeavored  to  provide  a 
systematic  methodological  point  of  departure 
for  scientific  history  and  critical  anthropology. 
Several  other  significant  influences  of 
anthropology  in  altering  the  attitude  of 
the  historian  should  be  noted.  In  the  first 
place,  nothing  could  be  more  destructive  of 
chauvinism  or  more  important  for  acquiring  a 
proper  perspective  for  the  interpretation  of  his- 
torical development  than  a  perusal  of  the  com- 
parative surveys  of  legal,  political,  social  and 
religious  institutions  by  such  writers  as  Lippert, 
Ihering,  Tylor,  Westermarck,  Hobhouse,  Durk- 
heim  and  Sumner.  The  greatest  blow  to  the 
venerable  myth  of  the  origins  of  political 
democracy  in  the  Germanic  folk-moot,  which 
it  ever  sustained,  was  the  discovery  that  it 
could  be  matched  among  primitive  peoples  the 
world  over  and  that  it  was  not  the  sole  posses- 
sion of  the  "noblest  branch  of  the  Aryans." 
Again,  while  the  laws  of  cultural  development 
which  have  been  formulated  by  anthropology 
and  the  breadth  or  view  inseparable  from  the 
handling  of  anthropological  data  are  of  the 
utmost  value  to  all  fields  of  history,  anthropol- 
ogy has  a  particularly  close  relation  to  the  field 
of  ancient  history  in  that  the  beginnings  of 
civilization  cannot  be  properly  understood  and 
interpreted  without  a  thorough  acquaintance 
with  the  background  of  the  primitive  culture 
which  preceded  the  dawn  of  written  history. 
Finally,  anthropology,  by  its  study  of  mankind 
as  a  unity  in  time  and  space  and  especially 
through  its  basic  premise  developed  by  Bastian 
of  the  fundamental  unity  of  the  human  mind, 
has  for  the  first  time  provided  a  firm  ba.sis  io^  ^ 
a  rational  conception  of  the  real  unity  of  history.  ' 

Closely  related  to  the  subject  of  anthropol- 
ogy, and  by  some  considered  a  branch  of  that 
science,  is  the  relatively  recent  science  of  pre- 
historic and  proto-historic  arch?eolog>'.  Work- 
ing in  co-operation  with  geologists  and  students 
of  paleontology  and  comparative  anatomy  the 
archzeologists.  such  as  Boucher  de  Perthes, 
Rutot,  Breuil,  Boule,  Dechelcttc,  Cartailhac, 
Schmidt,  Obermaier,  Peet  and  Munro,  have 
revealed  the  existence  of  mankind  on  the  earth 
during  a  space  of  time  almost  beyond  the  range 
of  human  conception.  The  origins  of  the  race 
have  been  pushed  back  from  the  few  thousand 
years  comprehended  in  the  exact  chronologies 
of  Eusebius,  Jerome,  Usher  and  Lightfoot  to  a 
vague  and  uncertain  period  not  less  than  a 
quarter  of  a  million  vears  ago.  The  profound 
modification  in  the  historical  perspective  which 
this    epoch-making    discovery    has    necessitated 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


257 


is  obvious.  As  Professor  Robinson  has  pointed 
out,  Thales  and  Herodotus  can  no  longer  be 
regarded  as  among  the  <'ancients,"  but  in  the 
new  scale  of  time  must  be  viewed  as  our  con- 
temporaries. Not  only  has  the  discovery  of 
the  remoteness  of  human  origins  fundamentally 
altered  all  previous  conceptions  of  the  time  cle- 
ment in  history,  but  it  has  given  a  new  impulse 
to  a  dynamic  theory  of  progress,  in  that  it  has 
shown  that  mankind  have  advanced  further  in 
the  few  centuries  that  have  elapsed  since  the 
dawn  of  written  history  than  they  had  in  the 
tens  of  thousands  of  years  previous  to  that  time, 
and  also  because  it  has  demonstrated  that  the 

.rate  of  progress  seems  to  be  accelerated  almost 
beyond  comparison  as  one  approaches  extremely 
recent  times.  Not  only  have  the  archaeologists 
rendered  almost  revolutionary  services  to  'his- 
tory in  lengthening  the  historical  perspective, 
but  they  have  also  been  of  the  utmost  assist- 
ance in  increasing  the  historian's  knowledge  of 
^Most  civilizations'*  within  what  are  convention- 
ally regarded  as  ^historic"  times.  Winckler 
and  Garstang  have  rediscovered  the  lost  Hittite 
civilization  of  ancient  Syria.  Schliemann, 
Evans  and  Dorpfeld,  among  others,  have  re- 
vealed a  flourishing  Aegean  civilization  coeval 
with  the  civilization  of  Egypt  in  the  "Pyramid 
Age'*  of  the  third  millenium  B.C.  The  pro- 
genitors of  the  historic  Greeks  no  longer  ap- 
pear as  the  builders  of  civilization  but  as  bar- 
barous destroyers  who  ruined  a  civilization 
which  they  were  unable  to  match  for  five 
centuries.  Equally  significant,  though  less 
familiar,  are  the  researches  of  Dechelette, 
Jullian,  Rice  Holmes  and  others  in  the  history 
and  culture  of  ancient  Gaul,  which  have  ex- 
hibited an  early  north  European  civilization 
which  was  in  touch  with  the  Aegean  civiliza- 
tion at  its  height  and  have  thrown  into  high 
relief  the  relative  savagery  and  backwardness 
of  Teutonic  culture  as  it  appeared  in  western 
Europe  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 
No  adequate  historv  of  Europe  can  any  longer 
ignore  the  vital  importance  of  this  ancient  Celtic 
culture.  In  this  same  department  should  be 
placed  the  epoch-making  discoveries  in  philol- 
ogy and  archjeologA'  which  have  allowed 
scholars  to  arrive  at  an  accurate  and  compre- 
hensive knowledge  .of  the  civilizations  of  the 
ancient  East,  which  had  been  hitherto  known 
only  by  allusions  in  the  literature  of  the 
Hebrews,  Greeks  and  Romans.  About  1825 
Champollion  deciphered  the  Rosetta  stone, 
mastered  hieroglyphics  and  laid  the  foundations 
of  Egyptology.  Egyptian  chronology  and 
I'hilology  were  firmly  established  bv  Lepsius  and 
lirugsch.  Mariette,  Maspcro  and"  Petrie  have 
Kd  in  the  excavations  that  have  produced 
I  LO'Ptian  archaeology,'.  Meyer  has  rcvi.sed 
1  uyptian  chronology-  and  Breasted  has  produced 
'he  best  synthesis  of  the  history  of  Egyptian 
ivilization.  Erman  has  provided  the  only  de- 
•lilcd  study  of  the  social  history  of  Egypt.  What 
Champollion  achieved  for  EgAT)tolo,g>-  was  ac- 
c  inphshed  for  the  history  of  Babylonia  and 
A  syria  by  Henry  Rawlinson  through  his  read- 
ii-  of  the  Behistun  inscription  in  the  middle  of 
the  19th  cciUury.  Schrader,  Dclitzsch  and 
l.i-rarde  perfected  Assyriolocry  and  Semitic 
piiilolog>-;  Botta,  Layard.  Sarzec.  Hilprecht 
and  Winckler  have  supervised  the  all-important 

■  excavations  of  this  region;  and  Maspcro. 
!^kyer,    Rogers,  Goodspeed  and  King  have  pro- 

VOL.   14  —  17 


vided  the  most  reliable  narratives  of  Assyrian 
and  Babylonian  history,  while  Jastrow  has 
drawn  the  best  picture  of  the  culture  of  these 
ancient   nations. 

Another  most  important  development  in  his- 
toriography in  the  last  century  has  been  the 
gradual  but  sure  secularization  of  "sacred**  his- 
tory and  the  consequent  removal  of  the  last  ob- 
stacle to  the  scholarly  and  objective  treatment 
of  every  field  of  history.  This  progress  has 
been  in  part  a  product  of  the  brilliant  advances 
in  the  critical  methods  in  the  last  century,  and 
in  part  has  been  due  to  the  philosophical  de- 
struction of  the  whole  basis  of  the  conception 
of  "sacred**  history,  which  has  resulted  from 
the  unparalled  discoveries  in  natural  science 
since  1800.  On  the  whole,  it  is  probable  that 
the  latter  has  been  the  most  important  influ- 
ence because  the  difference  in  the  skill  in 
handling  documents  on  the  part  of  Mabillon 
and  Wcllhausen  was  infinitely  less  than  the  di- 
vergence between  their  "Weltanschauung.**  The 
process  through  which  the  sources  of  the  Old 
Testament  were  discovered  and  separated  has 
been  briefly  discussed  in  an  earlier  section  of 
this  article  and  need  not  be  repeated  here.  Upon 
the  basis  of  this  crijicism  of  the  sources  there 
has  grown  up  a  critical  history  of  the  Jewish 
nation  and  its  religion  which  had  been  impossi- 
ble of  attainment  since  the  inclusion  of  Hebrew 
history  as  the  corner-stone  of  the  Christian 
synthesis  of  the  history  of  antiquity  by  Euse- 
bius.  Jerome  and  Orosius.  A  rather  lame  and 
halting  beginning  of  a  critical  and  objective 
history  of  the  Hebrews,  upon  the  basis  of  the 
biblical  criticism  of  the  early  19th  century,  was 
made  by  the  Gottingen  professor,  Heinrich 
Ewald,  whose  'History  of  the  People  of  Israel* 
was  published  in  the  years  following  1843.  The 
first  straightforward  and  thorough-going  crit- 
ical history  of  the  religious  development  of  the 
Jews  was  contained  in  the  'Religion  of  Israel,* 
published  by  the  Leyden  professor,  Abraham 
Kucnen,  in  1869.  Even  more  advanced  was  the 
epoch-making  'History  of  Israel*  of  Julius 
Wellhausen,  a  professor  in  Gottingen  and  the 
greatest  of  Old  Testament  scholars.  Wellhau- 
sen's  work,  published  originally  in  1878,  was 
but  a  brilliant  fragment,  and  the  preparation  of 
a  systematic  history  of  Israel  in  accordance  with 
the  advanced  views  of  Wellhausen  was  the 
work  of  the  Giessen  profes.sor,  Bernhard  Stadc, 
whose  'History  of  the  People  of  Israel'  was 
published  in  1887.  The  results  of  these  works 
from  the  new  critical  mode  of  approach  were 
utterly  to  destroy  the  exaggerations  regarding 
the  glories  of  ancient  Israel,  which  had  been 
set  forth  in  Kings  and  Chronicles-Ezra-Nehe- 
miah,  had  been  repeated  by  Tosephus,  and  were 
thoroughly  embodied  in  Christian  tradition. 
For  the  first  time  the  history  of  Palestine  was 
revealed  in  its  proper  perspective  in  the  larger 
history  of  the  ancient  East.  Not  less  damag- 
ing was  the  effect  of  the  work  of  Wellhausen 
and  his  associates  upon  the  doctrine  of  a  unique, 
primordial  and  revealed  monotheism  among 
the  Jews.  It  was  clearly  shown  that  monothe- 
ism had  been  a  gradual  and  precarious  develop- 
ment out  -of  an  original  polytheism,  and  that 
its  maintenance  was  always  diflficult  and  sub- 
ject to  serious  lapses.  The  late  origin  of  the 
alleged  laws  of  Moses  was  no  less  clearly  es- 
tablished.   The  secularizing  process  was  carried 


258 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


still  further  by  the  brilliant  Cambridge  pro- 
fessor, Robertson  Smith,  in  his  'Religion  of  the 
Semites,'  which  showed  the  many  points  of 
similarity  between  the  religion  of  the  Hebrews 
and  the  religious  beliefs  and  practices  of  the 
other  branches  of  the  Semitic  peoples.  Finally, 
Delitszch,  Wincklcr  and  Rogers  have  made  clear 
the  profound  iniluence  of  the  Babylonian  his- 
torical and  religious  traditions  upon  the  religion 
of  Israel.  While  the  work  of  the  most  of  these 
writers  was  highly  technical  and  intended  pri- 
marily for  scholars,  its  general  significance  was 
popularized  through  Renan's  brilliant  and  wide- 
ly-read 'History  of  the  People  of  Israel.'  No 
less  startling  has  been  the  result  of  the  inva- 
sion of  the  "sacred**  history  of  the  Christian 
era  by  the  critical  methods.  Building  on  the 
basis  of  the  textual  criticism  of  the  sources  of 
the  New  Testament  by  such  scholars  as  Strauss, 
Baur,  Loisy  and  Harnack,  and  the  study  of  con- 
temporary religions  by  Renan,  Hatch,  Cumont, 
Glover,  Dill  and  others,  Percy  Gardner,  Weiz- 
sacker,  Conybeare,  Wernle,  Harnack,  Duchesne 
and  McGiffert  have  explained  with  great  schol- 
arship and  lucidity  the  syncretic  nature  of 
Apostolic  and  Patristic  Christianity,  the  his- 
toric causes  for  the  final  success  of  Christian- 
ity, and  the  nature  of  the  gradual  developtnent 
of  Christian  dogma  and  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion. Henry  C.  Lea,  in  a  series  of  massive 
,  monographs,  which  constitute  the  most  notable 
contribution  of  America  to  Church  history,  has 
dealt  with  the  most  diverse  phases  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  medi.-eval  Church  in  a  fine  objective 
and  secular  spirit.  Beard  and  Troltsch  have 
,  traced  the  rise  and  development  of  Protestant- 
ism with  insight  and  candor.  Three  Catholic 
scholars  of  the  highest  rank  in  the  field  of 
scholarship,  Dollinger,  Huber,  and  Reusch, 
have  made  as  great  contributions  to  the  battle 
against  ecclesiastical  obscurantism  as  any  his- 
torians from  the  Protestant  or  sceptical  camps. 
Dollinger  totally  demolished  the  alleged  his- 
torical foundations  of  ultra-montanism  and  in- 
fallibility in  his  work  on  <The  Pope  and  the 
Council.*  Huber  surveyed  the  history  of  the 
Jesuits  with  the  aim  of  proving  their  deadly 
•  opposition  to  the  spirit  of  modern  learning  and 
the  freedom  of  thought.  Reusch  contributed 
the  standard  treatise  on  the  history  of  the 
Papal  Index  and  threw  a  flood  of  light  upon 
the  sinister  machinery  through  which  the  re- 
actionary element  in  Catholicism  has  endeavored 
to  perpetuate  the  credulity  of  its  followers  and 
to  exclude  the  perilous  fruits  of  modern  scien- 
tific and  critical  research.  The  net  resiilt  of 
the  labors  of  critical  scholars  of  every  religious 
complexion  in  the  field  of  "sacred  history"  has 
been  to  destroy  entirely  the  premises  of  the 
"Fathers,**  which  led  them  to  mark  off  a  field 
of  historical  developmetit  which  was  taboo  to 
critical  research,  and  it  has  opened  every  field 
to  the  operation  of  the  same  degree  of  patient 
research  and  calm  and  objective  narration. 

With  the  growth  of  modern  natural  science 
and  the  critical  attitude  in  the  appropriation  and 
assimilation  of  knowledge,  the  effort  to  formu- 
late some  magnificent  and  systematic  philo- 
sophical scheme  for  the  organization  and  pres- 
entation of  historical  development,  such  as  was 
devised  by  Augustine  and  Hegel,  has  greatly 
declined.  Scepticism  of  any  formal  philosophy 
of  history  seems  to  be  but  a  necessary  accom- 
paniment of  our  increasing  knowledge  of   the 


infinite  complexity  of  social  and  historical 
phenomena,  as  these  attempts  to  reduce  history 
to  such  simplicity  savor  too  much  of  the 
a  priori  method,  now  so  thoroughly  discredited. 
To  take  the  place  of  the  older  dogmatic  philoso- 
phy of  history  there  have  developed  what  may 
be  called  various  "interpretations"  of  historical 
data.  These  at  present  differ  from  the  older 
philosophy  of  history  in  the  absence  of  any 
teleological  element  and  in  the  rejection  of  the 
deductive  method.  They  aim  solely  to  em- 
phasize and  bring  into  high  relief  those  factors, 
which,  according  to  the  various  schools,  seem  to 
have  been  most  influential  in  producing  the 
civilization  of  to-day.  It  is,  in  short,  the  at- 
tempt to  supplement  Rankc's  aimless  search 
for  what  occurred  in  the  past  by  at  least 
a  feeble  and  humble  effort  to  explain  how  the 
present  order  came  about.  Far  from  being  less 
scientific  than  the  older  program  of  Ranke,  it 
really  constitutes  the  perfect  completion  of 
scientific  method  in  historiography,  in  the  same 
way  that  'the  formulation  of  the  great  laws 
of  natural  science  constitute  the  logical  com- 
pletion of  the  task  of  gathering  data  by 
observation  and  experimentation  in  the  labora- 
tory. The  preceding  sketch  of  the  develop- 
ment of  historiography  affords  striking  corrobo- 
ration of  the  thesis  of  Professor  Shotwell  that 
the  prevailing  types  of  historical  interpretation 
through  the  ages  faithfully  reflect  the  dominat- 
ing intellectual  interests  of  the  successive  eras. 
The  divine  epics  of  the  ancient  Orient  were 
superseded  by  the  mythological  and  philosophi- 
cal interpretations  of  the  thinkers  of  classical 
antiquity.  With  the  general  acceptance  of 
Christianity,  the  classical  mythology  was  replaced 
by  that  eschatological  conception  which  domi- 
nated historical  interpretation  from  Augustine 
to  Bossuet.  With  the  coming  of  the  commercial 
revolution  and  its  violent  shock  to  the  old 
intellectual  order,  there  arose  the  critical  and 
rationalistic  school  of  Bacon,  Descartes,  Vol- 
taire and  Hume,  which,  on  account  of  its  being 
too  far  in  advance  of  the  intellectual  orienta- 
tion of  the  masses,  tended  to  lapse  into  the 
idealism  of  Kant  and  Fichte  and  the  romanti- 
cism of  Burke,  Bonald,  DeMaistre  and  Hegel. 
The  growth  of  nationalism  following  the 
French  Revolution  tended  to  give  temporary 
precedence  to  the  political  mode  of  interpre- 
tation, but  the  great  transformations  which 
constituted  the  industrial  revolution,  of  ne- 
cessity doomed  so  superficial  a  view  to  an 
ephemeral  existence.  The  unprecedented  breath 
and  depth  of  modern  knowledge  and  intel- 
lectual interests  have  produced  a  number  of 
interpretations  of  historical  development,  most 
of  which  represent  the  outgrowth  of  some  one 
of  those  outstanding  intellectual  and  social 
transformations  which  were  reviewed  above. 
There  are  at  present  some  eight  definite 
I  'schools  of  historical  interpretation  among  the 
I  representatives  of  the  modernized  students  of 
i  historical  phenomena,  each  of  which  has  made 
;  an  important  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of 
historical  development.  They  are  in  no  sense 
in  all  cases  mutually  exclusive,  but  are  rather, 
to  a  large  degree,  supplcmenta^^^  They  mav  he  ^ 
designated  as  the  personal  or  "great  man** 
theory;  the  economic  or  materialistic;  the 
allied  geographical  or  environmental ;  the  spirit- 
i  ual  or  idealistic;  the  scientific;  the  anthropo- 
logical;  the  sociological;  and  the  synthetic  or 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


259 


^'collective  psyschological.**  It  may  be  pointed 
out  in  passing?  that,  in  the  main,  the  older  type 
of  historian  cither  clings  to  the  outworn  theory 
of  political  causation,  or,  with  Professor  Emer- 
,,  ton,  holds  that  historical  development  is  en- 
tirely arbitrary  and  olicys  no  ascertainable  laws. 
The  best  known  of  these  schools  of  historical 
interpretation,  and  the  onl}'  one  that  the  cur- 
rent political  historians  accord  any  considera- 
tion, is  that  which  found  its  most  noted  rep- 
resentatives in  Carlylc  and  Froude,  who  claimed 

)  .  that  the  great  personalities  of  history  were 
the  main  causative  factors  in  4»  historical  de- 
velopment. This  view  is,  of  course,  closely 
allied  to  the  catastrophic  interpretation  of  the 
18th  century  rationalists.  Perhaps  its  most  dis- 
tinguished adherents  to-day  are  Prof,  fimile 
•  Faguet  of  Paris  and  Prof.  William  A.  Dunning 

l-      of   Columbia  University.     The  contributions  of 

'2  the  economic  school  of  historical  interpretation, 
which  was  founded  by  Feurbaeh  and  Marx,  and 
has  been  carried  on  by  a  host  of  later  and  less 
dogmatic  writers,  such  as  Sumner,  Schmoller, 
Loria  Simons,  Ashley,  Beard,  Bogart  and 
Simkhovi'lch,  are  too  familiar  to  call  for  anjj 
additional  elaboration.  In  its  best  and  most 
generally  accepted  form,  it  contends  that  the 
-prevailing  mode  and  status  of  the  economic 
processes  in  society  will  to  a  very  great  degree 
decide  the  nature  of  existing  social  insti- 
tutions. In  spite  of  slight  exaggerations, 
nt)  phase  of  historical  interpretation  has 
been  more  fruitful  or  epoch-making.  Imme- 
.1  diately  related  is  the  geographical  interpreta- 
tion of  history  which  began  with  Hippocrates 
and  continued  through  the  writings  of  Slrabo, 
Vitruvius,  Bodiri,  Montesquieu  and  Buckle,  has 
been  revived  and  given  a  more  scientific  inter- 
pretation in  the  hands  of  such  writers  as  Karl 
Rittcr,  Ratzel,  Reclus,  Semple,  Mctchnikoff, 
Demolins  and  Huntington.  Since  the  days  of 
Ritter   no    respectable   historian   has    dared   to 

I  .  chronicle  the  history  of  a  nation  without  first 
having  acquired  a  knowledge  of  its  geography. 

I  The   special   phases   of   this   interpretation  have 

been  sketched  above  and  need  not  be  repeated 
at  this  point.  Widely  at  variance  with  the 
economic  and  geographical  interpretation  is  the 
somewhat  belated  offshoot  of  the  idealism  of 
Fichte  and  Hegel,  to  be  found  in  the  so-called 
spiritual  interpretation  of  history,  v/hich  finds 
its  most  ardent  advocates  in  Prof.  Rudolph 
Kucken  of  Germany  and  Prof.  Shailer  Matthews 
of  Chicago.  Professor  Matthews  thus  defines 
this  view  of  history:  "The  spiritual  interpre- 
tion  of  history  must  be  found  in  the  discovery 
vi  spiritual  forces  co-operating  with  geographic 
and  economic  to  produce  a  general  tendency 
toward  conditions  which  arc  truly  personal. 
.■\iul  these  conditions  will  not  be  found  in  gen- 
eralizations concerning  mctaphvsical  entities. 
but  in  the  activities  of  worthful  men  finding 
si It-expression  in  social  relations  for  the  eveV 
more  complete  subjection  of  phvsical  nature  to 
human  welfare."  Viewed  in  this  sense,  this 
type  of  interpretation  can  be  said  to  have  a 
c.nsiderablc  affinity  with  the  "great  man"  theory 
aii'l  apparently  aims  to  reconcile  this  doctrine 
wiih  the  critical  and  synthetic  interpretation, 
tin  !er  cover  of  a  common  theological  orienta- 
tion. Closely  conformable  to  this  mode  of  inter- 
pir  ation  is  Prof.  E.  D.  Adams'  attempt  to  Con- 
ner    the  historical  development  of  the  United 


States  with  a  succession  of  great  national 
ideals,  the  origins  of  which  are  not  explained^ 
Tb£-3ttempt  to  view  human  progress  as  directly 
correlated  with  the  advances  in  natural  science 
received  its  first  great  exposition  in  the  writings 
of  Condorcet  and  was  revived  by  Comte  and 
Buckle.  Aside  from  the  attention  given  to  it 
by  students  of  the  history  of  science,  such  as 
Sarton,  Tannery,  Libby  and  Sedgwick,  this 
phase  of  historical  interpretation  has  been  sadly 
neglected  by  recent  historians,  though  Prof. 
F.  S.  Marvin  and  Prof.  Lynn  Thorndike  have 
recently  shown  its  promising  potentialities.  It 
has  been  emphasized  incidentally  bv  Professors 
Lamprecht,  Shotwell  and  Robinson  in  their 
synthetic  interpretation  of  history,  but  it  re- 
mains the  least  exploited,  and  yet,'  perhaps,  the 
rnost  prornising  of  all  the  special  phases  of 
historical  interpretation.  Its  adherents  claim 
a  more  fundamental  causal  importance  than  can 
be  assigned  to  the  economic  interpretation,  in 
that  they  contend  that  the  prevailing  state  of 
scientific  knowledge  and  application  will  deter- 
mine the  existing  modes  of  economic  life  and 
activities.  The  main  tenets  of  the  anthro- 
pological interpretation,  as  well  as  an  enumera- 
tion of  its  chief  adherents,  have  been  provided 
above  and  may  be  passed  over  at  this  point. 
The  closely  related  sociological  intepretation  of 
history  goes  back  as  far  as  the  Aral),  Ibn  Khal- 
dun ;  was  developed  by  Vico,  Turgot,  Ferguson, 
Condorcet,  Comte  and  Spencer;  and  has  its 
ablest  modern  representatives  in  Professor 
Giddings  of  Columbia,  Professor  Thomas  of 
Chicago  and  Professor  Hobhouse  of  London. 
Professor  Giddings  adm.irably  describes  this 
theory  as  "an  attempt  to  account  for  the  origin, 
structure  and  activities  of  society  by  the  opera- 
tion of  physical,  vital  and  psychical  causes, 
working  together  in  a  process  of  evolution.* 
As  a  genetrc  social  science,  it  works  hand  in 
hand  with  cultural  anthropology  in  the  effort  to 
explain  the  repetition^  and  uniformities  in  his- 
torical development  and  to  formulate  the  laws 
of  historical  causation.  But  the  latest,  most 
inclusive  and  most  important  of  all  types  of 
historical  interpretation,  and  the  one  which, 
perhaps,  most  perfectly  represents  the  newer 
historj',  is  the  sv-nthetic  or  "collective  psycho- 
logical." According  to  this  type  of  historical 
interpretation  no  single  category  of  "causes" 
is  sufficient  to  explain  all  phases  and  periods  of 
historical  development.  Nothing  less  than  the 
collective  psychology  of  any  period  can  be 
deemed  adequate  to  determine  the  historical 
development  of  that  age,  and  it  is  the  task 
of  the  historian  to  discover,  evaluate  and  set 
forth  the  chief  factors  which  create  and  shape 
the  collective  view  ot'  life  and  determine  the 
nature  of  the  group  struggle  for  existence  and 
improvement.  The  most  eminent  leaders  of 
this  school  of  historical  interpretation  have 
been  Professor  Lamprecht  of  Leipzig;  Pro- 
fessors Levv-Bnihl.  Fouillee,  Seignobos  and 
Durkheim  of  Paris;  Professor  Marvin  of  Lon-  . 
don ;  Professors  Robinson  and  Shotwell  of 
Columbia  University,  and  Professor  Vcblcn  of 
New  York.  Their  general  dottrinc  has  eained 
particular  acceptance  in  France,  probably  on 
account  of  the  early  and  extensive  development 
•  if  social  psycholog>-  in  that  country. 

Even  this  brief  and  hasty  review  of  a  few 
of  the  more  conspicfOus  innovations  in  the  de- 


260 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


velopment  of  historiography  in  the  last  century 
will  convince  the  reader  that  the  progress  in 
this  field  has  not  been  less  than  in  the  othci 
branches  of  human  knowledge.  It  will  serve 
to  convey  the  full  significance  of  Frederic  Har- 
rison's statement  that  Freeman's  conception  of 
history  as  exclusively  "past  politics**  ignored 
nine-tenths  of  human  history.  A  synthesis  of 
the  various  modes  of  approach  to  the  subject- 
matter  of  history  must  l)e  the  ideal  of  all 
future  historians,  but  the  difiliculties  inherent  in 
this  endeavor  will  make  it  hard  to  be  attained. 
An  attempt  at  a  synthetic  review  of  the  de- 
velopment of  civilization  has  been  essayed  by 
Professor  Seignolios.  A  less  complete,  but  a 
more  stimulating  and'  suggestive  outline  has 
been  supplied  bv  Professor  Marvin.  An  able 
and  original,  if  not  wholly  objective,  synthesis 
of  the  history  of  the  modern  world  has  been 
supplied  by  the  detailed  manual  of  Professor 
Hayes.  Prof.  W.  C.  Abbott's  recent  attempt 
to  indicate  the  significance  of  the  commercial 
revolution  for  the  development  of  modern  civil- 
ization is  probably  the  best  harbinger  which  has 
appeared  of  that  synthetic  tendency  which  must 
characterize  the  "new  history.**  Professors 
Robinson  and  Shotwcll  have  long  urged  and 
predicted  a  larger  synthesis  of  historical  ma- 
terial. Whatever  success  daring  individual 
scholars  may  achieve  in  'this  synthetic  move- 
ment, it  will  be  apparent  that  the  history  of 
the  future  must  be  more  and  more  a  co- 
operative work.  The  complete  mastery  of  all 
the  newer  points  of  attack  will  be  denied  to 
most  individuals  and  each  must  contribute 
through  his  own  speciality.  The  understanding 
of  this  vital  fact  has  contributed  more  than 
anything  else  to  a  growing  spirit  of  mutual 
toleration  and  appreciation  among  the  various 
"schools**  of  historians.  In  much  the  same  way 
that  the  truth  has  been  replaced  by  truth  in 
recent  years,  so  the  history  of  various  enthusi- 
asts has  been  supplanted  by  a  broader  and 
sounder   history.     Again,    in    view    of    the    fact 

!that  it  has  now  become  apparent  that  the  prog- 
ress of  the  human  race  in  a  cultural  sense  since 
1500  has  been  greater  than  the  advancement  in 
50  or  more  preceding  centuries,  the  supreme 
(importance  of  modern  history  has  come  to 
be  generally  recognized,  and  the  primary  at- 
tention of  the  previous  generation  to  mediaeval 
history  has  become  a  thing  of  the  past.  The 
earnest  labors  of  the  mediaevalists  cannot  be 
deplored  for  they  have  furnished  the  younger 
generation  of  historical  scholars  with  not  only 
a  sound  methodolog\',  but  also  with  the  indis- 
pensable background  for  interpreting  the  origins 
of  the  modern  age.  Out  of  the  labors  of  the  last 
half  century  has  come  a  "new  history**  which 
will  not  only  furnish  a  mental  discipline  for 
training  in  the  methods  of  exact  scholarship, 
but  will  also  enable  one  to  know  the  past  and 
interpret  its  significance.  As  Professor  Robin- 
son has  said:  "The  'New  History'  is  escaping 
from  the  limitations  formerly  imposed  upon  a 
study  of  the  past.  It  will  come  in  time  con- 
sciously to  meet  our  daily  needs;  it  will  avail  it- 
self of  all  those  discoveries  that  are  being  made 
about  mankind  by  anthropologists;  economists, 
psychologists  and  sociologists  —  discoveries 
which  during  _  the  last  50  years  have  served 
to  revolutionize  our  ideas  of  the  origin, 
progress  and  prospects  of  our  race.  .  .  .  History 
must  not  be   regarded  as  a  stationary   subject 


which  can  only  progress  by  refining  its 
methods  and  accumulating,  criticizing,  and 
assimilating  new  material,  but  it  is  bound 
to  alter  its  ideals  and  aims  with  the  general 
progress  of  society  and  the  social  Sciences,  and 
it  will  ultimately  play  an  infinitely  more  im- 
portant role  in  our  intellectual  life  than  it  has 
hitherto  done.** 

Bibliography.— I.  The  Nature  of  His- 
tory.— Adams,  E.  D.,  *The  Power  of  Ideals 
in  American  Histor\'*  ;  Adams,  G.  B.,  'History 
and  the  Philosophy  of  History*  (in  The  Amer- 
ican Historical  .Review,  1909)  ;  Adams,  H.  B., 
'Methods  of  Historical  Study*  ;  Barth,  P.,  'Die 
Philosophic  der  Geschichtc  als  Soziologie*  ; 
Beard,  C.  A.,  'An  Economic  Interpretation  of 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States*  (Chap. 
I)  ;  Rernhcim,  E.,  'Lehrbuch  der  historischen 
Methode*  (Chap.  I)  ;  Berr,  H.,  *La  Synthese 
en  Histoire*  ;  Bourne,  H.  E.,  'The  Teaching 
of  History*  ;  Bristol,  L.  M.,  'Social  Adapta- 
tion* (Chaps.-  Ill,  VI,  VIII.  IX);  Buckle, 
H.  T.,  'History  of  Civilization  in  England* 
(Chap.  I)  ;  Burr,  G.  L.,  'Freedom  in  History* 
Hn  The  American  Historical  Review,  1917)  ; 
Bury,  J.  B.,  'The  Science  of  History*  (Inau- 
gural Lecture  as  Regius  Professor  of  Modern 
History  at  Cambridge)  ;  Carlyle,  T.,  'Essay  on 
History*  ;  Comte,  A.,  'The  Principles  of  A 
Positive  PoUty*  (Vol.  Ill);  Croce,  B.,  'In- 
torno  alia  Storia  della  Storiografia*  ;  'II  Con- 
cetto della  Storia*  ;  Dalberg-Acton,  J.  E.  D., 
'Inaugural  Lecture  as  Regius  Professor  of 
Modern  History  at  Cambridge*  ;  Dilthey,  W., 
'Einleitung  in  die  Geisteswisscnschaften*  ; 
Droysen,  J.  G.,  'Precis  of  the  Science  of  His- 
'tory*;  Dunning,  W.  A.,  'Truth  in  History* 
(in  The  American  Historical  Reziew,  1914)  ; 
Eucken,  R.,  'Die  Einheit  des  Geistlebens*  ; 
Flint,  R.,  'The  History  of  the  Philosophy  of 
History*  (2  vols.)  ;  Freeman,  E.  A.,  'The 
Methods  of  Historical  Study'  ;  George,  H.  B., 
'Historical  Evidence*;  Giddings,  F.  H.,  'Prin- 
ciples of  Sociology*  (Book  I)  ;  'A  Theory  of 
Social  Causation*  ;  Goldcnweiser,  A  A.,  'His- 
tory, Psycholog>'  and  Culture*  (in  Journal  of 
Philosophy,  Psvchologv  and  Scientific  Methods. 
1918)  ;  Green,  J.  R.,  'A  Short  History  of  the 
English  People*  (Preface)  ;  Harrison,  F^  'The 
Meaning  of  Histor\'*  ;  Haskins  and  Bourne, 
'History*  (in  Cyclopccdia  of  Education)  ; 
Lamprecht,  K.,  'What  is  History?*  ;  Langlois 
and  Seignobos,  'An  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  History*;  Lowie,  R.  H.,  'Culture  and 
Ethnologj^*  ;  Macaulay,  T.  B.,  'Essay  on  His- 
tory* ;  Matthews,  S.,  'A  Spiritual  Interpreta- 
tion of  History*  ;  Meister,  A.,  'Grundriss  der 
Geschichtswissenschaft*  ;  Monod,  G.,  'Portraits 
et  Souvenirs*  ;  'La.  Methode  en  Histoire*  (in 
La  Revue  Blcuc.  1908)  ;  Ranke,  L.,  'Zur  Kritik 
neuerer  Geschichtschreiber*  ;  Ratzel  and  Scm- 
ple,  'The  Lifluence  of  Geographical  Environ- 
ment* ;  Rhodes,  J.  F.,  'Historical  Essays'; 
Ritter,  K.,  'Geographical  Essavs*  ;  Robinson, 
T.  H.,  'Readings  in  European  History*  (Vol.  I. 
Chap.  I):  'The  Nev.^  History*;  Scligman,  E. 
R.  A.,  'The  Economic  Interpretation  of  His- 
tory* ;  ShotwelL  J,  T.,  'The  Interpretation  of 
History*  (in  The  American  Historical  Reviczv, 
1913)  ;  'History*  (Eleventh  edition  of  Encyclo- 
pccdia  Britannica)  ;  Simmel,  G..  ^Die  Problcme 
der  Gcschichtsphilosophie*  ;  Small,  A.  W.,  'The 
Meanine  of  Social  Science'  ;  Spencer,  H., 
'What  Knowledge  is  of  Most  Worth'  (in  West- 


HISTORY.  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


minister  Review,  1859)  ;  Tainc,  H.,  ^History  of 
English  Literature^  (Introduction)  ;  Tarde,  G., 
^Thc  Laws  of  Imitation'  (Chap.  IV)  ;  Teggarl, 
F.  J.,  'Prolegomena  to  History';  'The  Process 
of  History'  ;  Thorndike,  L.,  'History  of  Medi- 
aeval Europe';  (Chap.  I)  •  'The  Scientific  Pre- 
sentation of  History'  (in  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  1910)  ;  Todd,  A.  J.,  'Theories  of  So- 
cial Progress'  (Part  III)  ;  Treyclyan,  G.  M., 
'Clio,  A  Muse'  ;  Troeltsch,  E.,  'Historiography' 
(in  Hasting' s  Encyclopcedia  of  Religion  and 
Ethics)  ;  Vincent,  J.  H.,  'Historical  Research'  ; 
Wolf,  G.,  'Einfiihrung  in  das  Studiuni  der 
neueren  Geschichte' ;  Woodbridge,  F.  J.  E., 
'The  Purpose  of  History.^ 

II.  The  "Threshold  of  History." —  Arthur, 
J.,  'Time  and  its  Measurement'  ;  Breasted, 
J.  H.,  'Ancient  Times>  (Chaps.  I-II)  ;  'The 
Development  of  Religion  and  Thoueht  in  An- 
cient Egypt';  Dechelette,  J.,  'Manuel- d'Arche- 
ologie  prehistorique'  ;  Dussaud,  R.,  'Les  Civil- 
isations prehellcniques'  ;  Fowler  and  Wheeler, 
'Greek  Archaeology';  Haddon,  A.  C.,  'A  His- 
tory of  Anthropology'  (especially  Chap.  VIII)  ; 
Hall,  H.  R.,  'Ancient  History  of  the  Near 
East'  (Chap.  I,  Section  6)  ;  Hawes,  H.  B., 
'Crete,  the  Forerunner  of  Greece'  ;  Lubbock,  J., 
'Prehistoric  Times';  Macdonald,  J.  C,  'Chro- 
nologies and  Calendars'  ;  Marett,  R.  R.,  'An- 
thropology' (Chao.  V)  •  Marti,  K.,  'Chronol- 
ogy' (in  Encyclopcedia  Biblica)  ;  Meyer,  E., 
'^gyptische  Chronologic'  ;  Morgan,  J.  de,  'Les 
premieres  civilisations'  ;  Mortillet,  G.  de,  'La 
Prehistorie'  ;  'La  Classification  ethnologique'  ; 
Munro,  R.,  'Palaeolithic  Man  and  Terremare 
Settlements  in  Europe'  ;  'The  Lake  Dwellings 
of  Europe';  Oshorn,  H.  F.,  'Men  of  the  Old 
Stone  Age'  ;  Peet,  T.  E.,  'The  Stone  and  Bronze 
Apes  in  Italy'  ;  'Rough  Stone  Monuments  and 
their  Builders';  Robinson,  J.  H.,  'The  New 
History'  (Chap.  Ill)  ;  Sedgwick  and  Tyler, 
'A  Short  History  of  Science'  (Chaps.  I-VI)  ; 
Shotwell,  J.  T.,  'The  Discovery  of  Time'  (in 
Journal  of  Psychology,  Philosophy  and  Scien- 
tific Methods,  1915)  ;  Sollas,  W.  J.,  'Ancient 
Hunters  and  their  Modern  Representatives'  ; 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  'Anthropology'  (Chaps.  IV,  V, 
VII,  XIII,  XV)  ;  Webster,  H..  'Rest  Days> 
(especially  Chap.  VI)  ;  'Ancient  History' 
(Chap.  I);  White,  A.  D.,  'A  History  of  the 
Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology'  (Vol.  I, 
Chaps.  I,  V-X). 

III.  Historiography  in  Oriental  Antiquity. 
—  Bacon,  B.  W.,  'The  Genesis  of  Genesis'; 
Breasted,  J.  H.,  'Ancient  Records  of  Egvpt' 
(Introduction);  Charles,  R.  H.,  'Between' the 
Old  and  New  Testaments'  ;  'Apocrapha  and 
Pscudepigrapha'  ;  Chcyne.  T.  K..  'The  Found- 
ers of  Old  Testament  Criticism';  Corv,  I.  P.. 
'Ancient  Fragments'  ;  Duff,  A.,  'History  of  Old 
Testament  Criticism';  Hall,  H.  R.,  'The  An- 
cient History  of  the  Near  East'  (Chap.  I)  • 
Harper.  R.  F..  (ed.)  'Assyrian  and  Babylonian 
Literature';  Jacobs,  J.,  'Historiography'  (in 
Je-,i'tsh  Encyclopedia)  ;  Johns,  C.  W.  H',  'An- 
cient Babylonia'  (Chap.  I);  'Ancient  Assyria' 
(Chaps.  I-II)  ;  Kent.  C.  F.,  'The  Students'  Old 
TcMament  logically  and  chronologically  Ar- 
ranged ;  King,  L.  W..  'Chronicles  Concerning 
the  Early  Babylonian  Kings'  ;  Moore,  G.  F  ,  'The 
Literature  of  the  Old  Testament'  ;  Rogers.R.W., 
'History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria'  (Vol  l' 
espiv-ially  Chap.  X);  'Cuneiform  Parallels  to 
the  Old  Testament';  Sayce,  A.  H..  and  others 


(ed.),  'Records  of  the  Past';  Torrey,  C.  C, 
'The  Composition  and  Historical  Value  of 
Ezra-Nehemiah>  ;  Wellhausen,  J.,  'The  History 
of  Israel';   'Die  Composition  dcs  Hexateuchs.' 

IV.  Historiography  among  the  Greeks  and 
Romans.—  Boissicr,  G.,  'Tacitus'  ;  Botsford, 
G.  W.,  'A  Source  Book  of  Ancient  History' 
(Chaps.  VI,  XXVIII);  Botsford  and  Sihler. 
'Hellenic  Civilization';  Bury,  J.  B.,  'The  An- 
cient Greek  Historians'  :  Cauer,  F.,  'Thukydides 
und  Seine  Vorganger'  (in  Historischc  Zcit- 
schrift,  W)9)  ;  Christ.  \\'.,'Geschichte  der  griech- 
ischen  Literatur'  ;  Cornford,  F.  M.,  'Thucy- 
dides  Mythistoricus'  ;  Croiset,  A.,  'Histoire  de  la 
Litteraturc  Grccque' ;  Cruttwell,  'History  of 
Roman  Literature'  •  Cuntz,  O.,  'Polybius  und 
scin  Wcrk' ;  Drerup,  E.,  'Die  historische  Kunst 
der  Griechen';  Duff,  J.  W.,  'A  Literarj^  His- 
tory of  Rome'  ;  Gomperz,  T.,  'Greek  Thinkers'  ; 
Grundy,  G.  B.,  'Thucydides  and  the  History  of 
his  Age'  ;  Holmes,  T.  R.,  'Julius  Caesar's  Con- 
quest of  Gaul';  Kornemann,  E.,  'Thukydides 
und  die  romischc  Historiographie' ;  'Kaiser 
Hadrian  und  der  letzte  grosse  Historiker  von 
Rom'  ;  Mackail,  J.  W.,  'Latin  Literature'  ;  Ma- 
haffy,  J.  P.,  'History  of  Classical  Greek  Litera- 
ture' ;  Murray,  G.,  'A  History  of  Ancient 
Greek  Literature'  ;  Myres,  J.  L.,  (ed.)  'Anthro- 
pologv-  and  the  Classics'  (Chap.  V)  ;  Peter,  H., 
'Wahrheit  und  Kunst,  Geschichtschreibung  und 
Plagiat  im  Klassischen  Altertum';  'Die  ge- 
schichtliche  Literatur  fiber  die  romische  Kaiser- 
zeit  bis  Thcodosius  I  und  ihre  Quellen';  Sus- 
cmihl,  F.,  'Gcschichte  der  gricchischen  Litera- 
tur in  der  Alexandrinerzeit'  ;  Teuffel  and 
Schwabe,  'History  of  Roman  Literature'  ; 
Wachsmuth,  C,  't)ber  Ziele  und  Mcthoden  der 
gricchischen  Geschichtschreibung. ' 

V.  The  Historical  \\  ritings  of  the  Apos- 
tolic AND  P.\tristic  Pi:Rions.— Ayer,  J.  C, 
'Source  Book  for  Ancient  Church  Histor\-' ; 
Bacon,  B.  W.,  'The  Making  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment';  Bardenhewer,  O.,  'Patrology';  'Gcs- 
chichte der  altkirchlichen  Litteratur'  ;  Bury, 
J.  B.,  'The  History  of  the  Freedom  of 
Thought'  (Chap.  Ill)  ;  Church,  R.  \\.,  'Cas- 
siodorus'  ;  Conybeare,  F.  C,  'Myth,  Magic 
and  Morals';  'History  of  Ne\y  Testament 
Criticism'  ;  Duchesne,  L.,  'The  Early  History 
of  the  Christian  Church';  Ebcrt,  A.,  'Histoire 
generale  dc  la  litterature  du  moyen  age'  (Vol. 
1  )  ;  Flick,  A.  C,  'The  Rise  of  the  Mediaeval 
Church';  Gibbon.  E.,  'The  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire'  (Chaps.  XV-X\'I); 
Gwatkin,  H.  M,,  'Selections  from  the  Early 
Christian  Writers'  ;  Hamack,  A.,  'A  History 
of  Dogma'  ;  'Geschichte  der  altchristlichen 
Litteratur'  ;  Kirch,  J.  P.,  'Histor>''  (in  Catholic 
P^ncyclopccdia)  ;  Kriiger,  G.,  'Historv-  of  Early 
("hristian  Literature'  ;  Loisy,  A.,  'Les  fivan- 
i.reles  synoptiquc.s'  ;  McGifFert,  A.  C,  'The 
Church  History  of  Eusebius' ;  'Histon.'  of  the 
.\postoHc  Age'  ;  Muzzey,  D.  S.,  'The  Rise  of 
the  New  Testament':  Nash,  H  S.,  'The  His- 
tory of  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment' ;  Ogdcn,  C.  J.,  'Orosius'  Seven  Books 
of  History  Against  the  Pagans'  ;  Rcnan,  E., 
'History  of  the  Origins  of  Christianity'  ;  San- 
tayana,  G..  'Reason  in  Religion'  (Chap.  VI); 
Schaff  and  Wace.  (cd?.).  'The  Ante-Nicene, 
Nicene.  and  Post-Niccne  Fathers'  ;  'A  Dic- 
tionary of  Christian  Biography'  ;  Stanton, 
y.  H..  'The  Gospels  as  Histnrical  Documents'; 
Taylor,  H.  O.,   'The  Mediaeval  Mind'    (Chaps. 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE    AND  DEVELOPMENT 


TII-\M:  Vincent,  M.  R.,  <Thc  History  of  the 
Textual  Criticism  of  the  New  Testament*; 
Wredc,  W.,  *The  Origin  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment.' 

VI.  Medieval  Historiography. —  Balzani, 
y.,  'Early  Chroniclers  of  Europe:  Italy*; 
Brehaut,  E..  *The  History  of  the  Franks  hy 
Gregory,  Bishop  of  Tours'  ;  Biidiuger,  M.,  'Die 
Univcrsalhistorie  im  Mittelalter'  ;  Constans,  L., 
'Lcs  grands  historiens  du  moyen  age*  ;  Debi- 
dour  and  Etienne,  *Les  chroniqucurs  frangais 
au  moyen  age' ;  Dclisle,  L.,  'Litterature  latine 
et  histoire  du  moyen  age'  ;  Ebert,  A.,  *Histoire 
generale  de  la  litterature  du  moyen  age  a  I'Eu- 
rope  occidentalc'  ;  Foulke,  W.  D.,  *A  His- 
tory of  the  Lantj^obards  by  Paul  the  Deacon'  ; 
Gairdner,  J.,  'Early  Chroniclers  of  Europe: 
England';  Giles,  J.  A.,  'Matthew  Paris'  Eng- 
lish History  from  the  Year  1235  to  1273'  ; 
Gross,  C,  'The  Sources  and  Literature  of  Eng- 
lish History'  ;  Hashagcn,  J.,  'Otto  von  Freis- 
ing  als  Geschichtsphiiosoph  und  Kirchenpolit- 
iker>  ;  Hayes,  C.  J.  H.,  'An  Introduction  to  the 
Sources  relating  to  the  Germanic  Invasions'  ; 
Jahncke,  R.,  'Guilelmus  Neubrigensis'  ;  Jones, 
W.  L.,  'Latin  Chroniclers  from  the  Eleventh 
to  the  Thirteenth  Centuries'  (in  'Cambridge 
History  of  English  Literature'  Vol.  I,  Chap. 
IX)  ;  Langlois,  C.  V.,  'L'historiographie'  ; 
Lasch,  B.,  'Das  Erwachen  und  die  Entwicke- 
lung  der  historischen  Kritik  im  Mittelalter' ; 
Manitius,  M.,  'Geschichte  der  lateinischen  Lit- 
eratur  des  Mittelalters'  ;  Masson,  G.,  'Early 
Chroniclers  of  Europe:  France';  Molinier,  A., 
'Lcs  sources  de  I'histoire  de  France'  (Vol.  V, 
Introduction)  ;  Otto  of  Freising,  'Die  Taten 
Friedrichs*  (in  Die  GcschicliiscJircibcr)  ;  Pae- 
tow,  L.  J.,  'A  Guide  to  the  Study  of  Medie- 
val History'  ;  Paris  and  Jeanroy,  'Extraits  des 
chroniqucurs  frangais'  ;  Potthast,  A.,  'Weg- 
weiser  durch  die  Geschichtswcrke  des  euro- 
paischen  Mittelalters';  Ritter,  M.,  'Die  Christ- 
lich-mittclalterliche  Geschichtschreibung'  (in 
Historische  Zeitschrift,  1911)  ;  Robinson,  J.  H., 
'Readings  in  European  History'  (Chaps.  I,  IV, 
X-XII)  ;  Sandys,  J.  E.,  'A  History  of  Class- 
ical Scholarship'  (Vol.  I)  ;  Schulz,  M.,  'Die 
Lehre  von  der  historischen  Mcthode  bei  den 
Geschichtschreibern  des  Mittelalters'  ;  Steven- 
son, W.  H.,  'Six  English  Chronicles';  Taylor, 
H.  O.,  'The  MediiEval  Mind'  (Chaps.  X-XIII, 
XXI,  XXXI);  Teuffcl,  R.,  'Individuelle  Per- 
sohnlichkeitschilderung  in  deni  Dcutschen  Ge- 
schichtswesen  des  10  und  11  Jahrhunderts' ; 
Wattenbach  and  L(  renz,  'Deutschlands  Ge- 
schichtsquellen   im   Mittelalter.' 

VII.  Humanism  and  Historiography. — 
Beck,  F.,  'Studien  zu  Leonardo  Bruni' ; 
Benoist,  E.,  'Guichardin'  ;  Brandi,  K.,  'Das 
Werden  des  Renaissance'  ;  Brown,  P.  H., 
'George  Buchanan,  Humanist  and  Reformer'  ; 
Cirot,  G.,  'Mariana  historien'  ;  Clarke  and  Fox- 
croft,  'A  Life  of  Gilbert  Burnet'  (Introduction 
by  C.  H.  Firth)  ;  Emerton,  E..  'The  Begin- 
nings of  Modern  Europe'  (Chaps.  IX-X)  ; 
Firth,  C.  H.,  'Clarendon's  History'  (in  Eiiplish 
Historical  Reviezv,  1904)  ;  Fueter,  E..  'L'His- 
toire  de  I'Historiographie  Moderne'  (Books  I- 
II)  ;  Gebhardt,  E.,  'Les  historiens  florentins 
de  la  Renaissance  et  les  commencements  de  la 
economic  politique  et  sociale'  ;  Gcrvinus,  G., 
'Geschichte  der  florentinischen  Historiogra- 
phie'  ;  Hulme,  E.  M.,  'The  Renaissance  and 
the      Reformation' ;      Joachimscn,      P.,      'Ge- 


schichlsatiflfassung  und  Geschichtschreibung  in 
Deulschland  unter  dem  Kinfluss  des  Human- 
ismus';  Loomis,  L.,  'Mcdia?val  Hellenism'; 
Masiu.s,  A.,  'Flavins  Blondus' ;  Mayer,  E.  W., 
'Machiavellis  Gcschichtsauffassung' ;  Morley, 
J.  'Critical  Miscellanies'  (Vol.  IV);  Pattison, 
M.,  'Essays' ;  Ranke,  L.,  'Zur  Kritik  neuerer 
Geschichtschreiber' ;  Ritter,  M.,  'Studien  zur 
Entwickelung  der  Geschichtswissenschaft'  (in 
Historische  Zeitschrift,  1912);  Rodding.  'Puf- 
endorf  als  Historiker  und  Politiker' ;  Sandys, 
J.  E.,  'A  History  of  Classical  Scholarship' 
(Vol.  I);  Schwahn,  W.,  'Lorenzo  Valla:  ein 
Beitrag  zur  Geschichte  des  Humanismus'  ;  Vil- 
lari.  P.,  'Niccolo  Machiavelli' ;  Voigt,  G.,  'Die 
Wiederbelebung  des  classischen  Alterthums' ; 
Walser,  E.,  'Poggius  Florentinus,  Leben  und 
Werke'  ;  Wegele,  F.  X.,  'Geschichte  der  deut- 
schen  Historiographie' ;  Whitcomb,  M..  'A 
Literary  -Source  Book  of  the  Renaissance* ; 
Wolff,  M.,  'Lorenzo  Valla:  sein  Leben  und 
seine  Werke.' 

VIII.  The  Protestant  Reformation  and 
Historiography.— Baur,  F.  C,  'Die  Epochen 
der  kirchlichen  Geschichtschreibune'  ;  Beard, 
C,  'The  Reformation  of  the  Sixteenth  Century 
in  its  Relation  to  Modern  Thought  and  Knowl- 
edge';  Berger,  A.  E.,  'Die  Kulturaufgaben  der 
Reformation' ;  Bury,  J.  B.,  'A  History  of  the 
Freedom  of  Thought'  (Chap.  IV-V)  ;  Calen- 
zio,  G.,  'La  vita  e  gli  scritti  del  cardinale  Cesare 
Baronio'  ;  Floquet,  A.,  'Bossuet,  precepteur  du 
Dauphin'  ;  Fueter,  E.,  'L'Histoire  de  l'histori- 
ographie moderne'  (Book  III)  ;  Lang,  A., 
'John  Knox  and  the  Reformation';  McGiffert, 
A.  C,  'Protestant  Thought  before  Kant'  ; 
Maurenbrecher,  W.,  'Studien  und  Skizzen  zur 
Geschichte  der  Reformationszeit'  ;  Robinson, 
J.  H.,  'The  Study  of  the  Lutheran  Revolt' 
(in  American  Historical  Review,  1903)  ;  Scha- 
fer,  E.,  'Luther  als  Kirchenhistoriker'  ;  Schaum- 
kell,  F.,  'Beitrap-  zur  Entstehungsgcschichte 
der  Magdeburger  Centuries'  ;  Smith,  P.,  'The 
Life  and  Letters  of  Martin  Luther'  ;  'Luther's 
Correspondence  and  Other  Contemporary 
Letters';  Weltz,  P.,  'fitude  sur  Sleidan.' 

IX.  The  Foundations  of  Modern  Histori- 
ography.—  (1)  The  Commercial  Revolution 
and  Historiography, —  Abbott,  W.  C,  'The  Ex- 
pansion of  Europe'  ;  Bourne,  E.  G.,  'Spain  in 
America'  ;  Cunningham,  W.,  'Western  Civiliza- 
tion in  its  Economic  Aspects'  (Book  V)  ; 
Fueter,  E.,  'L'Histoire  de  l'historiographie  mod- 
erne' (Book  III)  ;  Hayes,  C.  J.  H.,  'A  Political 
and  Social  History  of  Modern  Europe'  (Chap. 
II);  MacNutt,  F.  A..  'Bartholomew  de  las 
Casas'  ;  Merriman,  R.  B.,  'The  Rise  of  the 
Spanish  Empire'  ;  Moses,  B.,  'The  Establish- 
ment of  Spanish  Rule  in  America'  ;  Prescott, 
W.  H.,  'The  Conquest  of  Mexico'  ;  'The  Con- 
quest of  Peru'  (Notes)  ;  Seignobos,  C,  'Medise- 
val  and  Modern  Civilization'  (Chap.  XVII)  ; 
Shepherd,  W.  R.,  'Unpublished  Lectures  on  the 
Expansion  of  Europe.' 

2.  The  Rise  of  Rationalism  and  Historiog- 
raphy.— Benn,  A.  W.,  'A  History  of  English 
Rationalism  in  Nineteenth  Century'  ;  Brougham 
H.  P.,  Robertson';  Burv,  T.  B.,  'A  History 
of  the  Freedom  of  Thouo^ht'  (Chaps.  VI-VII)  ; 
Daisches,  'Das  Verhriltniss  der  Geschichtschrei- 
bung Humes  zu  seiner  praktischen  Philoso- 
phic';  Delvaille.  L.  'Essai  sur  I'histoire  dc 
I'idee  dc  Progres' ;  Fester,  R.,  'Rousseau  und 
die  deutsche  Geschichtsphilosophie' ;   Flint,  R., 


HISTORY,  ITS  RISE   AND  DEVELOPMENT 


<The  Philosophy  of  History  in  France  and 
Germany'  ;  <The  History  of  the  Philosophy  of 
History  in  France';  Fueter,  E.,  *L'Histoire  tK- 
I'Historiographie  moderne'  (Book  IV)  ;  Grund- 
mann,  T-,  ^Die  geographischen  und  voikerund- 
lichen  Quellcn  und  Anschauungen  in  Herders 
Ideen';  Henking,  K.,  ^Johannes  von  Miiller*  ; 
Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  *The  Rise  and  Influence  of 
Rationalism  in  Europe*  ;  McGiffert,  A.  C, 
<Protestant  Thought  before  Kant'  (Chap.  X)  ; 
Morley,  J.,  'Voltaire';  'Rousseau';  'Critical 
Miscellanies';  Morison,  J.  C,  'Gibbon';  Rob- 
ertson, J.  M.,  'A  Short  History  of  Free 
Thought'  ;  Sakmann,  P.,  'Die  Probleme  der  his- 
torischen  Mcthodik  und  der  Geschichtsphilos- 
ophie  bei  Voltaire'  (in  Historische  Zcitschrift, 
1906)  ;  'Voltaires  Geistesart  und  Gedanken- 
welt*  ;  Schiich,  K.,  'Studien  uber  Johannes  von 
Midler'  ;  Sedgwick  and  Tyler,  'A  Short  History 
of  Science'  (Chaps.  X-XIV;)  Seignobos,  C, 
'Contemporary  Civilization'  (Chap.  Ill)  ; 
Stephen,  L.,  'A  History  of  English  Thought 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century'  ;  Weber,  G.,  'Fried- 
rich  Christoph  Schlosser.' 

3.  Romanticism  and  Historiography. —  Barth, 
F.,  'Die  Geschichtsphilosophie  Hegels' ;  Brandes, 
G.,  'The  Romantic  School  in  Germany'  ;  Dewey, 
J.  'German  Philosophy  and  Polities';  Fester, 
R.,  ^Humboldts  und  Rankes  Ideenlehre' ; 
Fueter,  E.,  'L'Histoire  de  I'Historiographie 
moderne'  (Book  V)  ;  Flint,  R.,  'The  Philoso- 
phy of  History  in  France  and  Germany'  ; 
Froude,  J.  A.,  'Thomas  Carlyle'  ;  Harrison,  F., 
'Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill  and  Other  Literary 
Estimates'  ;  Holmes,  O.  W.,  'Motley'  ;  Jullian, 
C,  'Augustin  Thierry'  (in  Revue  de  synthcsc 
historique,  1906)  ;  Monod,  G.,  'Jules  Michelet'  ; 
'La  place  de  Michelet  parmi  les  historiens  du 
XIXe  siecle';  Nichol,  J.,  'Thomas  Carlyle'; 
Paul,  H.,  'The  Life  of  Froude';  Robertson, 
J.  M.,  'Modern  Humanists';  Roe,  F.  W., 
'Carlyle  as  a  Critic  of  Literature';  Vauthier, 
G.,   'Villemain.' 

4.  Nationalism  and  Historiography. — Alt- 
schul,  Charles,  'The  American  Revolution  as 
Presented  in  Our  School  Text-Books'  ;  Bar- 
doux.  A..  'Guizot';  Ba;SSfitt..L  S.,  *The  Middle 
Group  of  American  Historians^";  Beard,  C.  A., 
'An  Introduction  to  the  English  Historians'; 
Burr,  G.  L.,  'European  Archives'  (in  American 
Historical  Review,  1902)  ;  Charmes,  X.,  'La 
Comite  des  Travaux  historiques'  ;  Clark,  J.  S., 
'The  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Fiske'  ;  Cramb, 
J.  A.,  'Germany  and  England'  ;  Davis,  H.  W. 
C,  ^The  Political  Thought  of  Hcinrich  von 
Treitschke'  ;  Droysen,  G.,  'Johann  Gustav  Droy- 
sen'.;  Diimmler,  E.,  'Uber  die  Entstehung  der 
"^f  <numenta  Germaniac'  ;  Farnham,  C.  H.,  'Life 

Francis  Parkman'  ;  Fueter,  E.,  'L'Histoire  de 
'  listoriographie  moderne'  (Books  V-VI)  ; 
-.illey,  J.  B.,  'Claude  Fauriel' ;  Gooch,  G.  P., 
'History  and  Historians  in  the  Nineteciuh  Ccn- 
tur>-'  (Chap.  V,  VIII-XXII)  ;  Guerard,  B.. 
'Notice  sur  Daunou' ;  Guilland,  A.,  'Modern 
Germany  and  Her  Historians'  ;  Hausrath,  A., 
'Treitschke'  ;  Hayes,  C.  J.  H.,  'The  War  of  the 
isations'  (in  Political  Science  Ouarterlv.  1914)  ; 
Hanotaux,  G.,  'Henri  Martin';  Krchbiel.  E.. 
'Nationalism.  War  and  Societv' ;  Marcks.  E.. 
Treitschke.  cin  Gedenkblatt' ';  'Heidelbcrger 
Professoren';  Meinecke.  F..  'Heinrich  von 
SvheP  (in  Historische  Zeitschrift,  1895)  ;  Mer- 
nam,  C.  c,  <A  History  of  American  Political 


Theories'  (Chap.  VII)  ;  Morison,  J.  C,  'Ma- 
caulay' ;  Monod,  G.,  'Renan,  Taine,  Michelet'; 
Jameson,  J.  F.,  'The  History  of  Historical 
Writing  in  America';  'Gaps  in  the  Published 
Records  of  United  States  History'  (in  Ameri- 
can Historical  Review,  1906);  Jullian,  C.,  'Ex- 
traits  des  Historiens  frangais'  (Introduction); 
Peck,  H.  T.,  'W.  H.  Prescott' ;  Rein,  A., 
'Seeley,  eine  Studie  uber  den  Historiker'  ; 
Remusat,  P.,  'Thiers'  ;  Robinson,  J.  H.,  'What 
is  National  Spirit?'  {Century  Magazine,  1916)  ; 
Rose,  J.  H.,  'Nationality  in  Modern  History'  ; 
Simon,  J.,  'Quatre  Portraits'  ;  'Thiers.  Guizot, 
Remusat,'  'Mignet,  Michelet,  Henri  Martin'  ; 
Sorel,  A.,  'Notes  et  Portraits';  Springer,  A., 
'F.  C.  Dahlmann'  ;  Stephens,  H.  M.,  'Modern  , 
Historians  and  their  Influence  on  Small  Na- 
tionalities' (in  Contemporary  Revietij,  1887)  ; 
'Nationality  and  History'  (in  American  His- 
torical Review,  1916)  ;  Stephens,  W.,  'The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Freeman'  ;  Trcvelyan,  G.  O., 
'The  Life  and  Letters  of  Macaulay'  ;  Varren- 
tropp,  C,  'Vortriige  und  Abhandlungen  von 
Heinrich  von  Sybel'  ;  Vinogradoff,  P.,  'Villain- 
age in  England'    (Introduction). 

5.  The  Rise  of  Critical  Historical  Scholar- 
ship.— Adams,  G.  B.,  'Methods  of  Work  in 
Historical  Seminaries'  (in  American  Historical 
Review,  1905)  ;  Adams,  H.  B.,  'The  Study  of 
History  in  American  Colleges  and  Universi- 
ties';  Altamira,  R.,  'La  Ensenanza  de  la  His- 
toria'  ;  Biiumer,  H.,  'Alabillon'  ;  Bernhcim,  E,, 
'Lehrbuch  der  hisiorischen  methode'  (Chaps. 
II-VI)  ;  Bourne,  E.  G.,  'Ranke  and  the  Be- 
ginning of  the  Seminary  Method'  (in  Essays  in 
Historical  Criticism);  Boulmy,  E.,  'A.  Sorel'; 
Broglie,  E.  de,  'Mabillon  et  la  societe  de 
I'abbaye  de  Saint-Germain-des-Pres  a  la  fin  du 
XVIIe  siecle' ;  Cazenove,  R.  de,  'Rapin  Thoy- 
ras' ;  Cazes,  A.,  'Pierre  Bayle' ;  Channing, 
Hart  and  Turner,  'A  Guide  to  the  Study  of 
American  History'  ;  Cipolla,  C,  'Leibniz  e 
Muratori'  ;  Classen,  J.,  'B.  G.  Niebuhr*  ;  Dal- 
berg- Acton,  J.  E.  D.,  'German  Schools  of  His- 
tory' (in  Historical  Essays  and  Studies)  ; 
Daville,  L.,  'Leibniz  historien'  ;  Dahlmann- 
Waitz,  'Quellenkunde  der  deutschcn  Ges- 
chichte' ;  Dilthey,  K.,  'Ottfried  Muller'  ;  Fred- 
ericq.  P.,  'The  Study  of  History  in  Englan4, 
Scotland,  Belgium  and  Holland'  (in  Johns  Hop- 
kins Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science, 
Vols.  V-VIII)  ;  'L'Enseigncment  superieur  de 
I'Histoire  en  Allemagnc,  France,  Ecosse,  Angle- 
tcrri,  Hollande  et  Belgique*  ;  Fueter,  E.,  'L'His- 
toire de  I'Historiographie  moderne'  (Books  V- 
VI);  Gooch.  G.  P.,  'The  Growth  of  His- 
torical Science'  (in  'Cambridge  Modem  His- 
tory, Vol.  XII,  Chap.  XXVI);  ^History  and 
Historians  in  the  Nineteenth  Century'  (Chaps. 
I-IV,  VI-VII,  XII,  XVIII,  XXIin  :  Gross.  C, 
'The  Sources  and  Literature  of  English  His- 
tory' ;  Guglia,  E.,  'Ranke's  Lebcn  und  Werke'  ; 
Guiraud,  P.,  'Fustcl  de  Coulanpes'  ;  Hall.  G. 
Stanley  (Editor).  'Methods  of  Teaching  His- 
tory' (2d  ed.)  ;  Hartmann.  L.  M..  'Theodor 
Mommsen';  Haskins,  C.  H.,  'Opportunities  for 
American  Students  of  Histor>'  at  Paris'  (in 
American  Historical  Revien',  1898)  ;  Hoflfmann, 
M.,  'August  Bockh';  Jadart,  'Dom  lean  Ma- 
billon^; Langlois.  C.  \^,  'Manuel  de  Biblio- 
graphie  historique' ;  Langlois  and  Seignobos, 
'Introduction  to  the  Study  of  History'  (Appen- 
dix   II)  ;    'Melanges   et   Documents   publics  a 


264 


HISTORY,  ANCIENT 


I'occasion  du  deuxieme  centenairc  dc  la 
mort  dc  Mabilloii*  ;  Molinicr,  A.,  *Lcs  Sources 
de  I'histoire  dc  France'  ;  Monod,  G.,  'Gcorg 
Waitz  ct  Ic  Seminairc  historique  de  Gocttin- 
giie*;  'Bibliographic  de  I'histoire  de  France'; 
Neumann,  K.  J.,  'Entwickelung  und  Aufgaben 
der  alten  Geschichte' ;  Pattisoii,  Mark,  *Es- 
says*;  Petit,  E.,  ^FrauQois  Mignet';  Pitra, 
Abbe,  'fitudes  sur  la  collection  des  Actes  des 
Saints';  Renan,  E.,  'fitudes  d'histoire  reli- 
gieusc'  ;  Ritter,  M.,  ^Leopold  von  Ranke'  ; 
Roscnminid,  R.,  *Die  Fortschritte  der  Diplo- 
matik  seit  Mabillon'  ;  Schulte,  J.  F.,  'Karl 
F'ricdrich  Eichorn';  Shotwell,  J.  T.,  'The 
ficole  des  Chartcs*  (in  American  Historical  Re- 
view, 1906)  ;  Stubbs,  W.,  'Lectures  on  Mediae- 
val and  Modern  History'  (I-IV)  ;  Vincent, 
J.  M.,  'Historical  Research';  White,  A.  D., 
'European  Schools  of  History  and  Politics'  (in 
Johns  Hopkins  Studies  in  Historical  and  Po- 
litical Science,  Vol.  V)  ;  Wyer,  J.  I.,  <A 
Bibliography  of  the  Study  and  Teaching  of 
History.' 

X.  Leading  Tendencies  in  Modern  His- 
toriography.— Ashley,  W.  J.,  'Surveys,  His- 
toric and  Economic';  Barth,  P.,  'Die  Phil- 
osophic der  Geschichte  als  Sociologie'  ; 
Beaumont,  G.  de,  'Notices  sur  Tocque- 
ville'  ;  Bernheim,  E.,  'Lehrbuch  der  his- 
torischen  methode'  (Chap.  I)  ;  Berr,  H.,  'La 
Synthese  en  Histoire'  ;  Boas,  F.,  'The  Mind 
of  Primitive  Man'  (Chaps.  VI-VH)  ;  Bourne, 
H.  E.,  'The  Teaching  of  History  and  Civ- 
ics';  Bristol,  L.  M.,  'Social  Adaptation' 
(Chaps.  IV-VI,  VHI-IX);  Bryce,  J.,  'Studies 
in  Contemporary  Biography' ;  Buckle,  H.  T.,  'A 
History  of  Civilization  in  England'  (Chap  I)  ; 
Caron  and  Sagnac,  'L'fitat  actuel  des  fitudes 
d'Histoire  moderne  en  France'  ;  Coker,  F.  W., 
'Organismic  Theories  of  the  State' ;  Conybeare, 
F.  C,  'Myth,  Magic  and  Morals';  'A  History 
of  New  Testament  Criticism'  ;  Cooley,  C.  H., 
'Social  Organization'  (Part  II)  ;  Davis,  M., 
M.,  'Psychological  Interpretations  of  Society' 
(Chaps.  II,  VI-VIII,  XIII)  ;  Duflf,  A.,  'A  His- 
tory of  Old  Testament  Criticism'  ;  Dunning, 
W.  A.,  'A  Generation  of  American  Historiog- 
raphy' (Address  before  American  Historical 
Association  1917)  ;  Ellwood,  C.  A.,  'Sociology 
in  its  Psychological  Aspects'  (Chaps.  II-III, 
VI-VII,  XVIII-XIX)  ;  Firth,  C.  H.,  'A  Plea 
for  the  Historical  Teaching  of  History'  ; 
Fisher,  H.  A.  L.,  'F.  W.  Maitland'  ;  Friedrich, 
J.,  'Ignatz  von  Dollinger' ;  Fueter,  E.,  'L'His- 
toire  de  I'Historiographie  moderne'  (Book 
VI)  ;  Gibbins,  H.  D.  B.,  'Economic  and  Indus- 
trial Progress  of  the  Century'  ;  Giddings,  F.  H., 
'A  Theory  of  Social  Causation'  (in  Publica- 
tions of  American  Economic  Association,  Vol. 
V)  ;  Gidc  and  Rist,  'A  History  of  Economic 
Doctrines';  Goldfriedrich,  J.,  'Die  historische 
Ideenlehre  im  Deutschland'  ;  Gooch,  G.  P., 
'History  and  Historians  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury' (Chaps.  XXV-XXVIII)  ;  Haddon,  A.  C, 
'A  History  of  Anthropology'  ;  Hankins,  F.  H., 
'Adolphe  Quctclct  as  Statistician';  Haves,  C. 
J.  H.,  'A  Political  and  Social  History  of  Mod- 
ern Europe'  (Vol.  II.  Chaps.  XVIII.  XXI, 
XXVII-XXVIII)  ;  Hazen.  C.  D..  'Europe 
Since  1815'  (Chap.  XXXII);  Heckcr,  J.  F., 
'Russian  Sociology'  (Part  II,  Chap.  IV,  Part 
III,  Oiap.  IV)  ;  Hohhouse,  L.  T.,  'Social  Evo- 
lution and  Political  Theory' ;  Huth,  A.  H.,  'The 


Life  and  Writings  of  Buckle';  Jacobs,  P.  T., 
•German  Sociology'  (Chaps.  II-III)  ;  Jodl,  F.j 
'Die  Kulturgcschichtschreibung'  ;  Lamprecht; 
K.,  'What  is  History';  Mace,  W.  H.,  'Method 
in  History';  Macgregor,  D.  H.,  'The  Evoluti'Mi 
of  Industry';  Mackintosh,  R,,  'From  Comte  i^ 
Benjamin  Kidd' ;  Merz,  J.  T.,  'History  of  Eu- 
ropean Thought  in  fhe  Nineteenth  Century'  ; 
Michaelis,  A.,  'A  Century  of  Archaeological 
Discoveries';  Oppenheimer,  F.,  'The  State'; 
RoI)ertson,  J.  M.,  'Buckle  and  His  Critics'; 
Robinson,  J.  H.,  'The  New  History';  'Outline 
of  the  History  of  the  Intellectual  Class  in 
Western  Europe';  Robinson  and  Beard,  'The 
Development  of  Modern  Europe'  (Vol.  II, 
Chaps.  XVIII,  XXXI)  ;  Rogers,  R.  W.,  'Cunei- 
form Parallels  to  the  Old  Testament';  Scha- 
piro,  J.  S.,  'Modern  and  Contemporary  Euro- 
pean History'  (Chaps.  Ill,  XXIV-XXVI)  ; 
Schaumkell,  F.,  'Geschichte  der  deutschen 
Kulturgcschichtschreibung'  ;  Seignobos,  C., 
'Contemporary  Civilization'  (Chaps.  XIV- 
XIX)  ;  Seligmann,  E.  R.  A.,  'The  Economic 
Interpretation  of  History'  ;  Shotwell,  J.  T., 
'The  History  of  History:  Texts  and  Commen- 
tary' (in  preparation)  ;  Introduction  to  G.  S. 
Slater's  'The  Making  of  Modern  England' ; 
Introduction  to  N.  D.  Harris'  'Intervention 
and  Colonization  in  Africa'  ;  'The  Interpreta- 
tion of  History'  (in  American  Historical  Re- 
view, 1913)  ;  Small,  A.  W.,  'The  Meaning  of 
Social  Science'  ;  Smith,  A.  L.,  'F.  W.  Maitland, 
Two  Lectures'  ;  Sumner,  W.  G.,  'Folkways' 
(Chap.  I)  ;  Todd,  A.  J.,  'Theories  of  Social 
Progress'  (Chaps.  IX,  XIV-XV,  XXVI- 
XXVII.  XXXI);  Tout,  T.  F.,  'Schools  of 
History'  (in  University  Review,  1906)  ;  Wal- 
lace, A.  R.,  'The  Progress  of  the  Century'  ; 
'The  Wonderful  Century.' 

Harry  Elmer  Barnes, 
Associate  Professor  of  History,  Clark  Univer- 
sity. 

HISTORY,  Ancient.  In  the  ordinary  use 
of  the  word,  history  is  a  record  of  past  events 
and  conditions  as  determined  by  the  processes 
of  investigation  included  in  historical  method. 
The  history  of  mankind  treats  not  so  much  of 
individuals  as  of  the  progress  and  decline  of 
communities  and  states  with  especial  reference 
to  morality,  religion,  intelligence,  social  organi- 
zation, economic  condition,  refinement  and  taste, 
government,  and  the  peaceful  and  military  re- 
lations of  governments  to  one  another  (cf.  An- 
drews, 'Institutes  of  General  History,'  p.  3). 
Strictly  there  are  no  periods;  the  life  of  man- 
kind flows  continuously,  never  wfioUy  chang- 
ing the  direction  of  its  current  at  any  d<..'">nite 
time.  But  for  the  convenience  of  study  tu:- 
tory  is  more  or  less  arbitrarily  divided  into 
periods,  during  each  of  which  the  resultant  of 
changes  in  the  life  of  mankind,  or  of  a  particu- 
lar part  of  it,  is  supposed  to  be  a  determinable 
movement  of  progress  or  decline  which  the  his- 
torian takes  as  characteristic  of  the  period. 

The  familiar  division  of  general  history 
into  ancient,  mediaeval,  and  modern  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  most  practical,  though  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  to  define  these  long  and  com- 
plex ages.  Most  obvious  is  the  geographical 
characteristic.  Leaving  out  of  account  India 
and  the  farther  East,  which  have  contributed 
little  to  the  progress  of  the  rest  of  the  world, 
ancient  history  has  to  do   (1)   with  the  fertile 


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